


Take It

by bell (bellaboo)



Category: Stargate Atlantis
Genre: Aliens Make Them Do It, Atlantis is a Character, Dark, M/M, Non-cone, Rape, dubcon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-27
Updated: 2015-12-27
Packaged: 2018-05-09 18:56:09
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 3
Words: 43,556
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5551517
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bellaboo/pseuds/bell
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Losing your touch, McKay? Stumped by a light bulb?”</p><p>“Hah hah,” McKay let out in monotone. “If you’d pay attention you’d know that Atlantis is beyond bulbs.”</p><p>“I know that,” John defended, straightening up. “It uses those-- things. Y’know. The things that glow.”</p><p>“Yes, the things that glow, very precise, Sheppard,” McKay said with extra crankiness. No wonder everyone else was huddled off at the other stations, working as far away as they could without leaving the room. “And those things that glow, for some reason, are malfunctioning.”</p><p>“Someone-- or something,” John corrected himself-- about half their enemies weren’t actually human-- “screwing around with us?”</p><p>“No,” McKay said, drumming his fingers, staring again at the code. “I think this is something from the inside."</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Credit: This fic was written in response to Resonant’s [Advantage](http://trickster.org/res/advantage.html)
> 
> Beta: briar_pipe and emptybackpack provided me with amazing support, feedback, and editing; this story has been much improved thanks to their work. xela_fic not only listened to me whine plot but also did a quick copy-edit job. xplodey_di was there when I needed to bounce ideas around.

“What do you mean, ‘the city is acting up’?” John asked.  
  
“Precisely that,” Carter said, tapping the wall-screen map on a spot towards the outer perimeter of Atlantis. “Like here, these rooms are doing things without being given any commands. This one has turned its lights off and locked the doors.”  
  
Indeed, one of the rooms indicated that it was locked. In it, a green light moved about agitatedly. “Whoever that is, I think they want out,” John said. What should they do? He could have Lorne and his team go down there with C4. It’d be better if they didn’t blow anything up, but they should go prepared.  
  
“I already have a couple of people from the engineering team looking into the matter,” Carter said.  
  
Or they could do it that way. “Sounds like you’ve got it under control,” John said, shifting from one foot to another, hands held behind his back. “That’s all you called me for?”  
  
She crossed her arms and he almost cringed: she looked like Elizabeth.  
  
Carter was okay and all, but as Elizabeth’s replacement, she was an intrusion. Substitutions were almost routine in the military: people got injured, died, and disappeared all the time. Someone had to take their place. Nothing personal, just unfortunate.  
  
So John understood why Carter had taken Elizabeth’s place. He just didn’t like it.  
  
She walked away from the screen towards her desk, so covered with papers, notebooks, calculations and assorted Atlantean gadgets that its white surface wasn’t visible. When that’d been Elizabeth’s desk, it had been meticulously organized, with papers stacked into neat piles. He resisted the urge to tidy it up.  
  
“I wanted to run it by you, that’s all,” she said, sitting down at her desk. Even when she was physically lower, she still seemed to be above everything else. Including John. “I’ve read all the reports on Atlantis, but I’m finding that they’re not, shall we say, entirely representative of what happens here. There’s a lot missing.”  
  
“It’s a lot of information,” John defended, putting his hands on his hips. It wasn’t as if he had the time, from one catastrophe to the next, to write it all down. And some things were best kept off record, anyway.  
  
“Oh, I didn’t mean--” she held up her hands. “I just wasn’t sure if this would escalate into something bigger. I figured that with all your experience with Atlantis, you’d have a sort of sense if there was more to this or not.”  
  
Gloating at having his superior experience acknowledged, he sat down at eye level with Carter again. “Nah,” he said, “this is pretty tame as far as mishaps go, around here.”  
  
“Has anything like this happened before?” Carter asked.  
  
“Well…” John slumped against the back of his chair; these, at least, had not changed. They were still rigid, but comforting in their familiarity. “Not exactly like this, no. But most of our full-fledged disasters are usually thanks to the Wraith, Replicators, and the Genii. And other groups that want us dead.”  
  
“Right,” Carter said, the side of her mouth quirking upwards. “So this won’t get much worse?”  
  
“Doubt it. At most, it’ll give McKay a headache, trying to fix the code.”  
  
“Good to hear.” Then, perhaps in reaction to John’s raised eyebrow, she added, “About it not escalating, not McKay’s headache.”  
  
“Right.” An awkward moment passed, and John’s eyes glanced to the back of the room. The wood masks were gone, leaving the walls bare. They’d been ugly, but he missing them, together with the light pine scent Elizabeth used to spray the room with. The room smelled of nothing, now.  
  
“I’m still learning the ropes,” Carter said, looking down, but then brought her head back up. “Since I never received training on how to run an alien city in a distant galaxy.”  
  
“Yeah, they don’t train you for that in the military.” He could sympathize with her on that much. He’d had his own ropes to learn; probably still had a lot more to learn, actually.  
  
“And they didn’t offer Ancient Technology 101 at the Academy, either.” Carter took in a deep breath and, after pushing aside a computer screen, clasped her hands over the desk. “Which brings me to something I need to discuss with you. The IOA sent me here with some suggestions--“  
  
John had heard many ‘suggestions’ from his superior offices over the years. “You mean ‘demands’?”  
  
“That’s a question of interpretation,” Carter grinned. John grinned back. Maybe it wouldn’t be so bad after all, running this joint with her. He sat up. “There’re some things they want changed--“  
  
“I don’t know about that,” John said, scratching the back of his neck, wincing. “Most of the IOA haven’t ever even been here, so they don’t really know what’s good or not for Atlantis.”  
  
“I know.” John startled, and Carter shrugged. “I _did_ say I’d read the reports. But however little they actually know about Atlantis, they still have their opinions, and I should at least consider them, since they gave me this position with the understanding that I’d make them happen.”  
  
Oh. This partnership of leaders might be doomed, then. Tampering with Atlantis was a no-no. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. “Are you _going_ to?”  
  
Carter ran a hand over her forehead, swiping at her bangs. “Depends,” she admitted.  
  
Elizabeth wouldn’t have ceded. “What _kind_ of changes we talking about here? A paint job? New curtains?”  
  
“Well, personally, I think we could use with a more dignified color for the cafeteria,” Carter said with a straight face. “But they had something more structural in mind. Playing with the administrative set up, things like that.”  
  
“Stuff works here.” John leaned forward, laying his hand at the edge of the desk where a set of manila folders fanned out. “We’ve got regular meals, climate control, and we’re still up and running even after all the attempts to flatten us to rubble! I say that deserves at _least_ a silver-star sticker.”  
  
“I’m not saying that the city isn’t in good condition,” Carter said. “Just that I’ll be trying to make things run more efficiently. That’s all. We’re trying to make things better.” John studied her, hoping to find a sign that she’d budge. But her expression was determined, so he nodded and left once she’d dismissed him.  
  
It wasn’t until he’d walked out of her office and felt the cooler air of the corridor that he realized that Carter had the room temperature a couple of degrees higher than Elizabeth ever had.  
  


*

  
  
“And that’s what she said,” John concluded, scrapping at the bottom of his plate with his fork. Most of his off-world meat and grey potato-type thing was piled up to the side, touched but uneaten.  
  
“You gonna eat that?” McKay asked and, after John pushed the plate towards him, dug in with gusto. John watched him, smiling lightly. How anyone could be that hungry was a mystery, but even so, seeing McKay that happy let him start to relax. Then he realized that Ronon and Teyla were looking at him, amused, and John quickly put his smile away.  
  
Ronon had eaten so fast, chunks of food disappearing into his mouth, it’d been like a blur. Teyla had just finished and was placing her utensils neatly beside her plate; she was more proper about her eating than his own grandmother, who’d made it her life’s work to get her grandson to behave properly at the table. She’d never reached that goal.  
  
Now that John was back in the cafeteria, he had to admit that Carter was right: it _could_ do with a more dignified color than bathroom-green. But he wasn’t going to admit that anytime soon.  
  
“This worries me,” Teyla said, her hands folded in her lap. “We have not always received the most pleasant instructions from Earth.”  
  
“Yeah, Earth-logic can be pretty confusing, and that’s speaking as an Earthian,” John said. He picked up on Ronon’s and Teyla’s appreciative smirks. “But it should be okay. They’ve trusted us so far.” Okay, so he was lying through his teeth. But he didn’t want them to get worried over nothing.  
  
“She wants to see the heads of staff. That include Teyla?” Ronon asked, hunched over with his elbows on the table.  
  
Trust Ronon to cut straight through to the most important part. John hadn’t even thought of that. He and McKay looked at Teyla. “What _are_ you?” John asked. “Ambassador? Sub-sub-sub head of staff?” Elizabeth had been the one in charge of HR.  
  
“I do not know either,” Teyla said, the side of her mouth twisting. “As I have heard some of your people say, I ‘just work here.’ I believe that my title has not as of yet been defined.”  
  
“But you were in charge of Atlantis when the Colonel and Elizabeth were gone. How did you do that, if you don’t even have a title?” Rodney asked around a mouthful of food.  
  
John shrugged. “She was the best one for the job.”  
  
“Thank you,” Teyla said, flashing him one of her bigger-than-life smiles, and John smirked in return. He never felt capable of returning those smiles back in equal value.  
  
“Don’t know if they’ll see it that way, though,” Ronon said, scratching out a bit of food from between his front teeth.  
  
“It’s just more bickering, isn’t it?” Rodney waved a fork, a bit of meat-stewed potato-type thing on it. “People fighting for a bigger piece of the pie. Doesn’t really mean anything.”  
  
“There are always upheavals for power in times of great change. But I am certain that we will not be affected by it,” Teyla said, with emphasized cheer, looking at each person at the table one by one  
  
She was overshooting the enthusiasm, but John nodded and raised his glass of the red berry juice Atlantis traded with Teyla’s people to get. “I’ll drink to that,” and did so, its slight bitterness making his mouth curl. Ronon and Teyla followed suit, though Rodney, still focused on his food, didn’t.  
  
Lorne walked into the cafeteria, holding a plastic tray laden with food, and exchanged nods with John when he came near. “How’s it going? Any imminent disasters?” Lorne asked.  
  
“None yet,” John said. “But we could still squeeze in one or two today, I’d say.”  
  
“Can’t wait,” Lorne deadpanned and John snorted. “Glad I get to eat before that. Wouldn’t want to face certain doom on an empty stomach.”  
  
They all waved him goodbye as he headed off for another table, except for McKay, who suddenly held a hand to his ear, turning away from the group and lowering his head. “Yeah? What?” He paused, listening. “Get someone else to do that, the other scientists have to earn their keep _some_ how. Okay, then get Zelenka, even he’s not so incompetent that he can’t handle-- what do you mean, you can’t override the system?”  
  
John, Teyla, and Ronon shared glances while McKay talked progressively louder into his radio, gesticulating often and wildly. John tensed, ready to jump into action. His team and Lorne were here; whatever it was, they’d handle it.  
  
“Jeez, do I have to do everything around here? I don’t know why they bother to hire anyone else if it all comes back to me!” McKay dipped the last of his meat in the remaining gravy and swallowed before getting up, leaving his tray and plate on the table. “The control room’s telling me there’s a glitch and they’re all too massively incompetent to solve it on their own. Why they haven’t cloned me yet so that I can run the whole program, I don’t know.”  
  
“Perhaps they are waiting for _you_ to do the cloning,” Teyla said, not hiding her smile.  
  
“Not another project,” McKay frowned. “I’ve got fifty thousand other things to do.”  
  
“Is this about the messed-up doors and lights?” John asked, putting both his elbows onto the table and folding his arms.  
  
“Yeah, how did you know?”  
  
“Colonel Carter mentioned it. Thought they’d have solved it by now, though.”  
  
“Apparently not.” McKay rolled his eyes. “Zelenka thinks there’s a problem in the code itself, which is impossible because I know for a fact that it’s perfect. I’ll just have to prove him wrong and save the day. Again.”  
  
“You do that,” John told him, teasing implicit, though McKay didn’t seem to notice. His head was already bent forward, working out solutions before seeing the problem. He marched out without saying goodbye, but John didn’t mind. In fact, McKay wouldn’t be McKay without a certain lack of social finesse, and he didn’t see any reason in wanting him to be different.  
  
“Should we go with him?” Teyla asked, looking off in the direction he’d left.  
  
“Nah, it sounded like a technical problem. Nothing we could do to help.”  
  
Teyla nodded. “It is just as well, as I must go lead a meditation group.” John let his horror manifest on his face. “Not everyone is as adverse to meditation as you are, John. Some find it helps keep their inner balance.”  
  
“Inner balances are overrated,” John confided; Teyla arched her eyebrows doubtfully. “You’ll stick around, Ronon?”  
  
“Nope,” Ronon said, rising to his feet. “Got training.”  
  
“Training?” Teyla asked.  
  
“Some of the guys want to learn how to fight without guns,” Ronon explained, picking up his plate and tray to drop it off at the clean-up area. “It’s good stuff.”  
  
The US military probably wouldn’t like much that their men were learning combat methods from an alien-- at least from an alien without any real connections to Earth. But what the military thought didn’t really matter; survival came first, and if anyone could teach you how to get through a battle alive, it was Ronon. John went with Teyla to drop off their own plates and trays.  
  
The three of them left the cafeteria and strolled through the corridors in amiable silence. The hallways split off into other areas in sharp angles, and that was comforting, somehow-- at least that much wouldn’t change. You could paint the surface all you wanted, but you couldn’t mess with the insides.  
  
John’s mind drifted, navigating the familiar hallways on auto-pilot. Unlike Rodney, who had spent weeks whining about how the city format threw off his claimed perfect sense of direction, from the very first day John hadn’t needed a map. He could sleepwalk here and still not get lost. In some ways, he knew the city better than he knew himself.  
  


*

  
  
John jogged up the stairs to the control room. McKay, alone, was hunched over a computer, one hand clutching the side of his head while the other tapped periodically at the screen as he scrolled through large amounts of text. “What, you’re still at it?” The sun had long since set, and Atlantis was lit up with artificial lights, setting off dark, sharp shadows everywhere.  
  
“Hm?” McKay asked absently, taking a moment to shift out of concentration mode and into conversation. But his nose was still practically pressed against the screen, its green glare reflecting on to his face. “Oh, yeah, I’m still at it. I’ve spent seven _hours_ trying to fix the stupid _lights_. I should’ve been an electrician. Or, better yet, we should _have_ electricians. I have better things to do!”  
  
John peeked over McKay’s shoulder, trying to make sense of the Ancient words mixed in with English text. He could sound them out, and in some cases he even recognized their meaning, but otherwise it was gibberish. It was pretty cool how McKay could read it without a second thought. Not that he’d ever say so out loud, but. “Losing your touch, McKay? Stumped by a light bulb?”  
  
“Hah hah,” McKay let out in monotone. “If you’d pay attention you’d know that Atlantis is _beyond_ bulbs.”  
  
“I know that,” John defended, straightening up. “It uses those-- things. Y’know. The things that glow.”  
  
“Yes, the things that glow, very precise, Sheppard,” McKay said with extra crankiness. No wonder everyone else was huddled off at the other stations, working as far away as they could without leaving the room. “And those things that glow, for some reason, are malfunctioning.”  
  
“Someone-- or some _thing_ ,” John corrected himself-- about half their enemies weren’t actually human-- “screwing around with us?”  
  
“No,” McKay said, drumming his fingers, staring again at the code. “I think this is something from the inside, nothing to do with the Replicators or anyone else. Zelenka was almost right; it’s structural.” He sat up and crossed his arms, looking up at the ceiling. “The code itself is all there, but for some reason the compiler or the interpreter or something-- basically, it’s not being put into effect. The city is ignoring the commands.”  
  
“You mean, like a five-year old that won’t eat her dinner?”  
  
“Basically, yeah,” McKay said, and he was typing again, already getting pulled back into the work. No one could focus the way McKay could, at least when he wasn’t busy fussing over things like humidity and allergens. His sheer focus was pretty cool, but again, John would never admit that out loud.  
  
“And that’s putting us into the Dark Ages.” John couldn’t resist teasing. Something about McKay demanded regular teasing. It wasn’t a complete day if he hadn’t done the verbal equivalent of pulling at McKay’s pigtails.  
  
For the first time since John had come in, McKay glanced his way-- with a glare. “If you’re going to stand around making jokes instead of helping--“  
  
John raised his hands, affecting innocence. “Just wanted a heads up on the situation; gotta know what’s going on in the city. So what’s causing this disobedience, d’you think?”  
  
“Um,” McKay said, his hands starting to wave in the air as he spoke. “Remember when we were relocating Atlantis? And we didn’t have enough energy and we had to reconfigure the programs to keep from losing the shield and dying horrible deaths in the middle of space?”  
  
John cocked his head. “Don’t tell me--“  
  
“We miiiight have messed up the lines of communication-- hey, it was an emergency! We didn’t have time to do things perfectly!” The corners of McKay’s mouth turned downwards. “We barely made it out alive!”  
  
“I know,” John sighed, running a hand through his hair. “Things were… confusing.” He didn’t need to be reminded; he remembered all too well how up-in-the-air those days had been. Elizabeth was dying, Atlantis was falling to pieces, and McKay kept running off to make vital decisions without consulting anyone. John had barely known what to do or how to act. It’d all spiraled of control.  
  
He never wanted to experience that kind of chaos again, but what with the IOA trying to impose their power through Carter and these kinks in Atlantis’ system, it felt like things were starting to slip out of his control again. John closed his eyes and took a deep breath.  
  
He heard Teyla bounding up the stairs before he saw her. Judging from the speed of her scuffling feet, she had to be upset. Teyla didn’t run without reason. When she came into the control room, she wore a frown strong enough to knock down weaker men. “John, I must talk to you.”  
  
“Good,” McKay said, waving them away, “If you take him, I can focus on this.”  
  
“Don’t mind him,” John said breezily, though he knew that acting like everything was okay wouldn’t shake Teyla of her problems. “He’s just touchy because he messed up the code and now he’s got to make it right.”  
  
Teyla’s expression softened as she looked towards McKay. “Will you be able to fix it? Do you need help?”  
  
“It’s not a problem,” McKay said, and then, irritably, “Okay, it is, but I’ll make it stop being a problem. Just let me get back to this, you’re being annoying.”  
  
“And that means goodbye! C’mon, Teyla, let’s leave the mad scientist to his sad, crazy ramblings.” They went down the staircase, and even without speaking, he knew that they were headed for a usually empty storage room straight up ahead. It was the best place nearby to talk in private, free of the rest of the bustle, even this late in the evening, around the center of Atlantis.  
  
Once they’d reached the room, John closed the door behind them. It was a relatively small room, filled with lines of firm but empty metal shelves. There was no window, but if elsewhere on Atlantis the lights weren’t working, they were fine here. “What’s up?”  
  
Teyla stepped so that they were only a couple of feet apart and stood tall. “I just finished my review with Colonel Carter,” she said, raising her chin. “And she asked me about my duties here and what I have done in the past.”  
  
Teyla must’ve been on the list of heads of staff, then, and probably towards the top, if Carter had their meeting so soon. John let out a breath, put his hands on his hips. “Why? That’s all in the reports.”  
  
“Maybe so, but she asked, and then she informed me that, to follow the IOA’s new procedures, I would receive a different status and set of protocol.” Teyla’s face was as flat as it ever got: flat eyebrows, thin flat mouth, flat eyes.  
  
John’s heart sank. “What status and protocol, exactly?”  
  
“It would seem that I now have the same status as a ‘civilian,’” she said, with great dignity.  
  
“A civilian!” John exclaimed, raising his hands in exasperation. “That’s crazy! With everything you’ve done, all your experience, you deserve much more! And protocol? What protocol?”  
  
Teyla shrugged. “I need permission from a high-ranking staff member in order to access the same information I could before, on the Atlantis databases. And I must report more of my actions here, such as inform Colonel Carter of meditation classes.”  
  
“You’re not a kid with a bedtime,” John ranted, pacing. Though, honestly, he was surprised that this hadn’t happened sooner. The IOA had always been paranoid, doubtful of every little thing that wasn’t inked into their neat little rule books. Maybe they would let up later-- they often did, once they were proven blatantly wrong.  
  
But forget logic. This was his team. It was personal.  
  
“John.” Teyla did not move, but she followed with her eyes as John paced back and forth. “You realize that we must be careful about how we handle this change in administration, do you not? This is a sensitive political game.”  
  
“Yeah, they’re undermining my status--” He stopped in his tracks for a second. “I have to talk to her.” He decided, and ran off, ignoring Teyla’s yell for him to wait. This wasn’t a time of waiting; he had to act, before things got any worse.  
  


*

  
  
John darted down the corridor he’d just walked through with Teyla, weaving around the people in his path. It wasn’t exactly dignified for a Lieutenant Colonel to hurry like this on the base, but everyone here knew him. Atlantis was a strange place, anyway, where rules were broken if needed. And John wanted it to stay that way.  
  
He zipped up the stairs to the control room and then it was just a few more steps into Elizabeth’s-- Carter’s -- office. John made it in record time. “We,” he said, only slightly out of breath, “need to talk.”  
  
Carter was sitting at the conference table and some annoyance showed through her usually calm expression. “Can it wait?” Her gaze flickered to right in front of her, and only then did he see the third person in the room: a bald and slightly round man sat opposite Carter, looking affronted. John had to stare blankly before pulling up a name: Candance, the head of the biology department.  
  
He’d interrupted a meeting and he hadn’t even noticed. Not good. Missing details like who was around was what got you killed in battle. And out of battle, too. Make that especially out of battle. Not being aware of your surroundings was fatal, and he was letting his awareness slip.  
  
He took a deep breath, summoning up every bit of his very little politeness. “Sorry to interrupt,” he rubbed the back of his neck. “But this is pretty important, mind if I talk to Colonel Carter right now…?”  
  
“I suppose, if it’s an emergency,” Candace said, shooting John a look that suggested that he was pretty sure this was not, in fact, an emergency. Great. Now one of the department heads was mad at him. Making enemies on the inside was never a good idea, not when they had enough enemies on the outside to destroy them several times over. Candance hastily shuffled his papers into a brown leather briefcase, then shut it with a loud clack. “Excuse me,” he said icily, and left.  
  
Once the door closed, John drove straight into the problem, standing with his feet slightly apart. “Teyla said you demoted her down to civilian status.”  
  
Carter opened her mouth and closed it, as if looking for the best way to word her thoughts. “I wouldn’t call it demoting, since she didn’t have a rank in the first place.”  
  
“Don’t get into semantics,” John said, exasperated. “Fact is, she’s one of the most vital people here on Atlantis and you stuck her at the bottom of the ladder. She deserves better.”  
  
“I understand that you’re upset, Colonel,” she said in placating tones. She pulled together remaining papers and tapped them on the glass edge of the table, creating one solid pile. “But there are these new regulations in place and we can’t be entirely uncooperative, not when I’ve just started out here. I’m sorry.”  
  
He’d never found ‘It’s Regulation’ the most convincing of arguments.  
  
“I _trust_ Teyla-- I trust my whole team with my life. With Atlantis.” He said, voice controlled but not without an undertone of passion. He stared at Carter unwaveringly, holding his body firm and rigid.  
  
Carter’s cautious expression melted into one of sympathy. “I’m glad you trust her. And I understand that she’s been invaluable to Atlantis. But, Colonel, I don’t know her--“  
  
“ _I_ know her,” John said, breaking out of his stillness and starting to pace again in a short line. He understood, on an intellectual level, that Carter wasn't any happier than he with all this, just as he knew that he shouldn’t be aggravating yet another person who wasn’t his enemy. He could almost hear Teyla’s telling him to tread more carefully. But he wasn’t Teyla. “That should be good enough.”  
  
“I trust you,” Carter got up to her feet slowly, clasping her file over her waist. “And I’m certain that Teyla will prove herself. She can always be promoted later. But the IOA has set up a protocol--“  
  
“Elizabeth didn’t care about protocol,” John snapped.  
  
Carter raised an eyebrow. “I rather think she did.”  
  
“Oh, c’mon,” John looked up at the ceiling for a second “She always--“  
  
“From what I gathered, she only broke it when there was no other choice.”  
  
As much as he didn’t like to hear her challenge his memory of Elizabeth, she _was_ right. He ran a hand through his hair, thinking of other arguments. “Who said we’re choiceless now? You could promote Teyla, if you wanted.”  
  
Carter walked towards her desk; she placed the file the middle of a messy pile of other files and envelopes. “There’s no need-- if the time comes when we need her to do something beyond her civilian status, or to play with any of the other rules, I will do it, Colonel. But not before that.”  
  
It really was warmer here than before; John tugged at his collar, stifled in his own clothes. “You’re creating problems that’ll screw us over later,” John warned. “Next thing we know, someone not as qualified will get a job that only Teyla can do, or Ronon will be denied vital attention--“  
  
“Oh,” Sam said, surprise widening her eyes widened. “You already heard about Ronon?”  
  
“What _about_ Ronon?” John’s expression hardened, one foot treading closer to the desk, then another.  
  
Carter squirmed, just a little. “I guess not. Well, he’s also been given civilian status.”  
  
“What?! Now, see, that doesn’t even make sense!” The room was hotter than ever. He pressed his lips together, taking a quick breath through his nose. Calmer, “He was a specialist in the Satedan military, and he’s been trained as a soldier. Couldn’t he get a fancier set of privileges than that?”  
  
But Carter had started to shake her head before he’d finished talking. “The IOA asked to consider the kind of responsibilities they’ve handled in the past, and how long they’ve been working for Atlantis.” She grimaced. “I have to admit, that last criteria felt more arbitrary.”  
  
“They’ve got to stick a label on everything, don’t they,” John said under his breath. “They’re getting out of hand.”  
  
His radio signaled in. “What?” he asked at the same moment as Carter touched her ear and said, “What is it?”  
  
“Colonel Carter? Lieutenant Colonel Sheppard?” an unknown but professional female voice said. John flicked a glance back at Carter, and she was looking at him, her face reflecting the same question he had: what was this about? “There’s a problem in the lowest level in the north-eastern pier.”  
  
He’d never been there, but the quickest way would probably by taking a transporter down to the basement and walking to the north-eastern pier. He’d never been there before, but he was pretty sure he could find his way. Wouldn’t take more than ten minutes.  
  
“What kind of problems?” Carter asked. She went up to her wall screen and started scrolling through various maps of Atlantis. The north-eastern pier glowed yellow on all of them, contrasting with the black and green rendering of the rest of the city.  
  
“Um, artificial anti-gravity-fields are, uh, being created.”  
  
“What?” John asked, studying the map to find any available hints. “That makes no sense, why would that be happening?”  
  
“We do not know, sir. The scientists have not found any reasons so far.”  
  
“Well, then cut off the energy to that sector,” Carter suggested. “That’ll put an end to the anti-gravity fields.”  
  
“We’ve already tried that,” the female voice said. “Atlantis won’t let us and, no, we don’t know the reason for that either.”  
  
“Never a boring moment, huh,” Carter sighed. She picked up the computer tablet from her table and tucked it under her arm. “I’ll go talk to McKay, see if we the two of us can’t figure this out.”  
  
“No,” John said. This time, they were going to do things-- or at least _some_ things-- his way. “He’s going with me, and Teyla and Ronon, to check it out.”  
  
“To the affected area?” Carter asked.  
  
John spread his hands. “Where else?”  
  
“There’s no reason for you to go,” Carter sighed. “The problem is probably in the code itself, so there’d be no external factors.”  
  
“Ah,” John wagged a finger at her. “But we can’t know that for sure until we check it out. And if there _are_ any external factors, then there might be a security breach, which we should be there and ready to deal with.”  
  
“Still,” Carter insisted, “I think it’d be better to analyze it as best as we can from a distance before putting anyone in potential danger. If there _is_ something down there, you’d have no idea what it is.”  
  
She was probably right, but he wasn’t going to sit back and let more decisions be taken from his reach. “All the more reason to go find out, before it does anyone else harm,” he winked, doing a backwards inch towards the door. “And, hey, those anti-gravity fields have got to be draining away at our ZPMs. You check the code, and we’ll go down; that way, we tackle the problem both ways and figure it out before all our energy is sucked dry.”  
  
There was something like a staring match between them, and finally Carter sighed. “Okay. Go scout the area.” He’d turned on his heels when she added, “Before you go, Colonel: I’m not Dr. Weir. And I will do everything in my power to run Atlantis the best I can, taking into account what things are actually like here, but it won’t be the same as before.”  
  
Pretending to agree, he nodded, then slipped out before she could change her mind. He radioed Teyla, Ronon, and McKay, jogging towards the locker rooms. “Guys get ready for an adventure. Skirts are not recommended.”  
  


*

  
  
“I get sick without gravity,” Rodney complained. He was taking as long as possible getting himself into his mission uniform, like a boy dragging his feet while getting ready for school. Maybe it’d have been easier to take Lorne, since he’d be more at ease with the weightlessness, but he needed McKay on this one, to deal with bad wiring or any other science stuff that needed fixing. And he’d be fine, once he got past the whining.  
  
The many locker rooms on Atlantis, including this one, had been set up by the expedition in its first weeks here to resemble the ones you’d find in a typical gym on Earth. Dark-grey metal lockers they’d brought in were lined up along the walls, and there was a bench situated along the middle of the room. Unlike the gyms on Earth, though, there were no mirrors, bathroom stalls, or sinks. It was pretty close to the original thing, though, including the slight odor of male sweat. Not even Atlantis’ impeccable cleaning system could get rid of that smell.  
  
“Yes, I know,” John said, zipping up the vest to his defensive gear. “ _And_ you get seasick and carsick. I’ve been on enough missions with you to know. Take a paper baggy. Or three.” He shut the locker door.  
  
“I think it’s all that liberty,” McKay speculated, sitting on the bench. He was slowly putting one pant leg. Then again, when was he _not_ speculating? He talked more than he breathed. Sheppard half-listened. “There’s so much freedom of movement, I get confused and can’t decide where to go and I end spinning and getting sick. Not a pretty sight.” He got the other pant leg on, and stood up, zipping. “There’s just too many choices, you know? Like eating a buffet and having to pick between meat, chicken, or fish-- hi, Teyla.”  
  
Teyla stormed in, livid; it must be because he’d ran off, earlier, without coming back when she’d called after him. John shrank. “Not suited up yet?” He asked, his voice growing weaker as she strode towards him. “We’re heading out as soon as the team is ready.”  
  
“What did you say to Colonel Carter?” Teyla asked. Or seethed. It wasn’t quite a seethe, but it was close, and with Teyla, the effect was heart-stopping. John did his best and produced the thinnest, fakest smile in the world.  
  
“Nothing much, just that I disagreed with the status they assigned you--“  
  
“John, did you not hear a word of what I was saying, before you ran out?” And now the boy was John, getting a scolding from a parent. He took a couple of steps backwards until he hit the lockers behind him, and Teyla followed, getting right into his personal space. “This is a pure politics and you cannot simply rush in with your demands and expect to get any results! We must approach this calmly and negotiate.”  
  
McKay stared at Teyla, then at John, then back at Teyla again. “Is this a private conversation? It sounds like a private conversation. I should probably go outside and let the two of you handle it--“  
  
“We’ve got nothing to hide, McKay,” John said curtly, a lock digging into the middle of his spine. “Teyla, what did you expect me to do? Sit back and watch as they took away what you deserve? What you’ve _earned_?”  
  
“No, John,” her eyes flashed. “I expected you to _listen_. The way you did it, simply running out without even taking my perspective into consideration, makes me think you were more upset with how it reflected on yourself rather than how affected me.”  
  
Was she right? She might be right. He wasn’t sure. “Oh, that’s not fair!” John said. “That’s not true at all!”  
  
“I should go,” McKay decided, gesturing towards the exit. He took a tentative step towards it, but stayed after John glared at him.  
  
“Look me in the eye,” Teyla challenged, holding an index finger up to him. “And tell me it was not at least a little about you.”  
  
John did look her in the eye. And then he looked away. “Okay. Maybe a little. But only an eensy-teensy bit. A small slice. You got most of the pie, really. A whole _feast_ of pie.”  
  
Teyla still seemed disgusted, though, even though he’d given her a whole feast. She stepped back, giving John more breathing space. “I will go prepare myself and meet you at the rendezvous point,” she said, her voice suddenly cold.  
  
“Ouch,” McKay said after she’d left. “I have no idea what that was about and, no,” he shook a hand. “Don’t tell me, because I absolutely do not want to know.”  
  
John smacked McKay on his upper arm. “What was up with all the ‘I should go’s, anyway?”  
  
“What!” McKay rubbed at where he’d been smacked. “You know I’m no good at the personal stuff. Especially not confrontations. In fact, fights tend to escalate in direct proportion to my proximity. It’s true!” he said with conviction.  
  
“Yeah, sure,” John said. Now wasn’t the time to get into McKay’s weird ideas about himself and other people. And that time probably would never come. He didn’t need to dig into that can of worms. “Tell me more about the anti-gravity fields.”  
  
“Right,” and McKay visibly relaxed, like he’d gotten out of a tight, formal suit. He was back in his element. “Well, it’s probably linked to the lost control over the door locks and the lights--“  
  
“Those been fixed yet?” John triple-checked his pockets, making sure he had everything on him. It was a pain, but he didn’t want a repeat of the time he’d been stuck at the top a prickly tree with a group of ravenous lion-wolves waiting for him at the bottom without even a knife to chip away the spines while he waited for rescue.  
  
“No--” John grimaced at him. “Oh, c’mon, you can’t complain, you’re the one who pulled me from the computers to go on this mission! I can’t be in two places at once-- well, _theoretically_ , I could--“  
  
“We’ve already been over that, McKay.” It’d taken two hours to explain and the only reason he’d sat through it was because it’d been one hell of a long ride in the jumper. McKay was handy in that way. He kept the stir-crazy at bay.  
  
“Have we? Did I explain about the-- I did? Okay, then, moving on, it’s not a bug, I don’t think. The systems aren’t finding holes, viruses, Trojans, or anything else like that.”  
  
“Which means?” John prompted.  
  
McKay opened one of the general supply cabinets and started to root through it. “Either the problem is in the code itself, like we’ve been thinking, or some external factor is playing havoc.”  
  
“That’s good,” John said. “Since we’re going to check that out now.”  
  
“Can’t wait,” McKay muttered and pulled out from the cabinet a few brown-paper bags and a couple of anti-nausea pills. John smirked to himself. It was just so very McKay.  
  


*

  
  
“What’re we looking for?” Ronon asked, slouched against the corridor wall, relaxed, not at all like they were about to hunt for the unknown. He was in his usual clothes with his trusty gun in a holster. How could anyone be that plain, easy to read?  
  
The three of them-- Rodney, Ronon and himself-- were waiting for Teyla at the transporter closest to the lockers. Teyla was usually the first one to finish getting ready. John shifted uncomfortably; ranting at him must’ve delayed her.  
  
“Don’t know,” John admitted. “Anything that looks out of place, I guess.”  
  
“But don’t shoot it before I can look at it,” Rodney advised and, as an after-thought, “Unless it’s shooting back at you or trying to eat you or anything else unsavory.”  
  
“Thanks,” Ronon said in a tone McKay wouldn’t recognize as dry. “I’ll go light on the trigger.”  
  
“Okay, good,” McKay said. “Hard to analyze something that’s been destroyed.”  
  
“Sorry to keep you waiting,” Teyla said, arriving fully suited in Atlantis’ mission gear. Ronon nodded hello and she nodded back; Rodney put his hand up to his chest quickly, more a jerk than a hand-wave, and gave a “hi.”  
  
John too nodded. He didn’t know what to say. Awkward.  
  
Teyla smiled, and John’s shoulders slumped, suddenly free of a whole lot of tension. Things were better between them. Not perfect, but better. He smiled back. “Before we go-- John, do not worry about so much about the changes that are taking place. With patience and caution, all will work out for the best. You will see.”  
  
“Um, thanks,” John said, his shoulders tightening up again with renewed tension. Someday, he’d ask Teyla to _not_ air their issues in public. Ronon glanced at him, silently asking what had happened, and Rodney was fidgeting with his vest pockets. He probably wanted to escape before any more “serious” talk took place. Best to act like nothing _had_ happened. “Let’s get going, then.”  
  
“What is the plan, exactly?” Teyla asked, tilting her head.  
  
Hadn’t Ronon just asked the exact same thing? Did no one know what was going on? Apparently he’d forgotten to fill them in the details. A bad sign for a leader, not being able to assign orders properly or even keep track of what _had_ been assigned.  
  
But there was no reason to read too much into this. Everything was okay. And even if it wasn’t, he could fake that it was. “We go down to the affected area and we look. The moment you find anything suspicious, radio me. And, no, we don’t know what we’re looking for. It could be anything.”  
  
“But whatever it is, don’t shoot it,” Rodney repeated.  
  
“Right,” John said. “Leave something for the scientists to poke at. Okay, McKay, you’re with me. Teyla and Ronon, you go together.” Going with Teyla meant facing his guilt, and McKay was likely to be the first one to figure out what the problem was. John wanted to be there when he did; not knowing what was wrong with Atlantis was making him feel off, like he was covered in goose-bumps.  
  
“Anything else?” John asked.  
  
“Yeah,” Ronon said, jerking away from the wall and sticking his hands into his pockets. “Gotta say, can’t stand the basement. It can’t be right, something that deep under the water.” Unlike the rest of the city, the last few levels always remained submerged. McKay explained to John why, once, but he couldn’t remember the reason.  
  
“Well, the whole city can and does submerge itself,” McKay pointed out. “So maybe there’s something ‘not right’ with all of Atlantis.”  
  
Not cool. Not to mention that it was terrible for team morale, thinking Atlantis was inherently wrong. John clapped his hands once. “Okay, I see we’re done here. Off we go!” The three of them nodded at him and shuffled into the transporter: first Ronon, then Teyla, then Rodney-- after some silent prodding-- and finally, John.  
  
His heart sped up a little as he stepped into the transporter; the start up was his favorite part of all missions. Nothing had gone wrong yet, and so much was possible. Who knew, maybe with a bit of luck they could put an end to the confusion spreading out over Atlantis.  
  
Once everyone was inside, the transporter lit up, and just like that they’d reached their destination. The transporter doors opened and John walked towards them, stepping forward with his right foot. But before he could put his left foot down, his right one floated off the ground. “Hey,” he complained. “What’s--”  
  
He floated up higher. And so did everyone else. “Woah.”  
  
“Oh, God,” McKay said, his voice high-pitched. His face was frozen with horror, but he pulled his body into a ball, as if to escape what was happening “Please someone tell me I’m imagining this.”  
  
Ronon was half-smirking, like this was a game and he was happy to play.  
  
“Did you not say that only _certain_ rooms were under an anti-gravitational field?” Teyla asked, pulling her head back just in time to narrowly escape collision with John’s left elbow. He contracted his limbs to avoid further contact; didn’t want to accidentally hurt anyone.  
  
Okay, so gravity was gone. Should they stay? Stupid question. Of course they should. If things were getting worse, they couldn’t turn tail and run.  
  
“It must’ve spread,” McKay said and then touched his ear. “Someone, anyone, in the control room, tell me what the hell is going on in the lowest level!”  
  
The response was sent to all of their radios. “As we told Colonel Lieutenant Sheppard earlier, some rooms have applied an anti-gravitational field,” said a male voice. John recognized it but couldn’t name whose it was; the crew on Atlantis had grown over the years and he didn’t know everyone anymore. He should. Not knowing who was who made it harder to run things. “Specifically, rooms 8098, 8700. 8801--“  
  
“Oh, great, we get someone who can’t even _read_ ,” McKay snapped. As he spoke, his unrolled himself from the ball-shape. “Try looking at the screen, you know, where they _tell_ you what’s happening, instead of making it all up.” Shouldn’t McKay be getting sick right about now? Maybe he’d got so caught up in work he’d forgotten to get sick. “Notice anything else, genius?” McKay asked.  
  
A minute passed before the voice spoke again. “No, sir, the data confirms--  
  
“Put Zelenka on,” McKay barked. He crossed his legs and glowered.  
  
“What is it?” Zelenka said. It was always strange to hear someone you _did_ recognize right in your ear. A little too intimate, like they were right up against you, their arms around your back. John squirmed, and not just because of the slight nausea from being technically upside down.  
  
Zelenka sounded wary or tired. Maybe he was both. Talking to McKay could take a few years off your life. “It is as Schingler said, rooms 8098--“  
  
“Perhaps the computers have not yet picked up on what is happening,” Teyla suggested just as she caught on to a railing. Ronon drifted just close enough for her to grab his foot and, with a bit of back-bending and stretching, he too got a grip on the railing.  
  
John, though, kept on floating uselessly, too far away to reach them or any of the other surfaces. He kicked, a stupid waste of energy. This wasn’t water. He wasn’t going to propel himself with movement. Habits were hard to kill, though; he still wanted to kick.  
  
“That’s crazy,” McKay raved. He didn’t seem to care at all about being half-diagonal in relation to the ground. “There’s no reason why Atlantis wouldn’t be able to keep track of what’s going on in inside itself, it’s like not knowing that your own foot is broken, or--“  
  
“What _is_ going on?” Zelenka asked.  
  
“The whole floor seems to have given up on gravity,” John said, reaching futilely for the ceiling. “Including the transporter.” McKay turned a greener shade. Ah, so he had to be directly thinking about zero-g to get sick.  
  
“But there’s no register--” Zelenka protested.  
  
“Oh, okay, thanks for setting that straight for me, I guess I’m really not hovering in mid-air with my feet over my head, I’m--” McKay stopped mid-phrase to pull out a brown-paper bag from a vest pocket and puked in it. Lucky Zelenka, getting to hear that particular special effect up-close and personal in his radio link.  
  
Everyone in the room pointedly looked away.  
  
After a retch or two, McKay said, “Just figure out why the computers are getting the wrong readings and get back to me.”  
  
“Understood. Zelenka out.”  
  
John felt a tug on the back of his vest; he turned around and saw that Ronon had gotten a hold of him. Reeled in, John finally was physically stable, holding onto the smooth, wooden railing. “Thanks,” though he wished he could’ve done this on his own. He hated relying on others to get around, like he wasn’t capable of moving by his own will.  
  
But then McKay came just within reach, and John could at least be the one to pull him towards the railing.  
  
“So we go back up now, right?” McKay asked. He’d gone from green to white.  
  
“We’re sticking to the original plan,” John said, eyeing the exit and the hallway outside it, calculating how hard to push himself from off the wall. “We split up and we go looking for what’s weird.”  
  
“But the only way to get anywhere like this is by pushing!” McKay let go of the railing with one hand to wave it about as he spoke, but then his eyes widened, more horrified than ever, and he went back to holding on with both hands and all his strength. “ How much can we get done by acting like human Pong?  
  
Ronon turned his face to Teyla. “What’s ‘pong’?”  
  
“I am certain it does not matter,” she said.  
  
“I don’t know about the rest of you, but I haven’t perfected my wall-bouncing skills and hey! Where are you going?!” McKay exclaimed, dismayed. Teyla had already pushed herself towards the exit.  
  
“We must find out the source behind this,” Teyla said as she floated through and then out of the transporter. Her voice receded as she disappeared from sight. “Can you imagine the consequences if this were to spread any further? What if all the other floors on Atlantis were to lose its gravity?”  
  
“Oh, god, the energy drain _alone_ from trying to maintain an anti-gravitational field over the entire city! We could lose a whole ZPM from that in just a few days!” Rodney babbled. “That would be worse than bad, not to mention all the other problems in logistics, like the cafeteria, oh god, how are we going to eat without gravity? They’re serving soup tomorrow!”  
  
“Right,” John said. “Now that we’re on the same page, can you get a move on?” Ronon was already sailing out of the room. “Ronon and Teyla, you go left; Rodney and I will take the right.”  
  
“All right,” Teyla said, her voice coming further away than ever. “Be careful.”  
  
“Look for suspicious people, weirdly glowing things, and any other apparent malfunctions,” McKay called out. Ronon too was out of sight now, but John wasn’t worried. He could count on Ronon and Teyla to take care of themselves.  
  
“Weird glowing things?” John asked.  
  
“Well, yeah, you’ve seen how Ancient technology works, haven’t you? The more lights, the more powerful it is.”  
  
“Point. Okay, are we good to go or what? Can you handle this?”  
  
As if to contradict him, McKay only clung all the harder to the railing. His face, more expressive than a mood ring, was vehemently red. “I could be working for the best universities in the world-- Earth, that is-- and instead I get to explore alien areas by acting like a tennis ball!”  
  
John grinned. McKay was a pain the neck, but if anyone could get John to crack up, it was him. “C’mon, let’s go get the score higher than love-love.”  
  
“Oh, God, that’s not even funny!” McKay moaned.  
  
“You’re just jealous of my incredible wit,” John said, doing his best imitation a mega-billionaire playboy out of an action movie to further irritate McKay. He felt better. Maybe it was because McKay made him grin, or maybe it was because he was finally _taking action_. Or maybe it was because of the guilty satisfaction at being so much better at this than McKay (not that that was much of a feat).  
  
John hummed with energy, eager to go out exploring. “Let’s go!” He pushed himself towards the exit and watched McKay bite his lips. “Don’t want to stay there alone, do you?” McKay squeezed his eyes shut for a few seconds, but finally pushed off as well, with more force than necessary.  
  
Their mission didn’t use the basement. It was far away and Atlantis was bigger than their needs. It could house hundreds of thousands, but the base had less than five hundred people. And the less they spread out, the fewer complications to deal with. John had only ever been in this area, out of bored curiosity one slow week. He hadn’t stayed long.  
  
As it did Ronon, the basement gave John the creeps. Some things should remain lost and forgotten.  
  
“What did the Ancients use this floor for, d’you think?” John asked to pass the time as they lazily drifted from one wall to the next.  
  
“Who the hell knows?!” McKay said, cranky. His eyes were still squeezed shut, for the most part, except when he was about to hit a wall again; then his eyes snapped open and bulged out. He spoke rapid-fire. “ _Did_ they use it? There aren’t even any windows here, and that’s depressing enough as an Earthling, and the Ancients, well they, seem to have been big on light, of all kinds, so I can’t imagine any one of them would’ve wanted to stay around here. Maybe they used it for storage, since it’s not exactly prime real-estate.”  
  
That much was true. The corridor looked like all the ones in the floors above, and since Atlantis ran a self-cleaning program, it should’ve been in the same condition. But this place smelled danker, mustier. Felt grimier too, like any other basement piled with rotting cardboard boxes and grey cement walls.  
  
They traveled slowly down their side of the corridor, but eventually McKay got the hang of it and they moved at a faster pace. A few more minutes and then John finally spotted a door. “Let’s try getting into there.”.  
  
“Can’t we just skip it? Look at the whole floor first? Because there are _hundreds_ of rooms down here and we can’t look at each one--“  
  
“Maybe we’ll get lucky and hit the jack pot,” John said before McKay could come up with any more excuses. He angled his next push so that his body floated by the motion sensor, which opened the door. He grabbed onto the doorframe and pulled himself into the room.  
  
It was dark in there.  
  
McKay had shoved himself towards the room and wasted no time in pointing out the obvious. “The lights aren’t on. Why aren’t the lights on? It must be a part of the malfunction, so we probably shouldn’t be here! Let’s go back out!”  
  
“Oh, come on,” John said, still floating from the momentum of the push he’d given at the doorway. “If part of the problem is showing up here, maybe we can learn more about the reason. We’ve gotta take a look.”  
  
“B, but,” McKay sputtered, clinging to the doorframe. “All over Atlantis doors are malfunctioning and what if these shut on us? I don’t know about you, but I don’t want to get stuck in there, we don’t even know what’s _in_ there--“  
  
“Relax, McKay.” John came into contact with the wall opposite the door. Judging from how long it took him to get there, this place was medium-sized, a bit bigger than his bedroom.  
  
This would be fun to get around. And by ‘fun’ he meant ‘tricky.’ “If that happens, we’ll radio the others. Worst comes to worst, Lorne can come by with a stick of C4 to blow us out.”  
  
The corridor’s musty smell hadn’t reached this room. It was _emptier_ , somehow. Dried up and dead, as lifeless as a sand-dune. As John’s eyes started to adjust to the relative darkness, he started to make out shapes. Or shape. There was only one thing in the room, it seemed, a structure right in the middle, shaped like a seventies-era computer. Other than that, the room was nondescript, following the Ancients’ minimalist style in décor. “Look, I’m in here and nothing bad has happened so far, right?”  
  
McKay, with a few more mutters and whines, finally shoved off from the doorframe in direction of the opposite wall. The doors closed on their own accord. “Didn’t I say this would happen?!” he squealed. “Why don’t you ever listen to me--“  
  
“Calm down, the doors are automatic. Take a look.” John pushed with all his might and flew towards the wall right next to the door; they reopened.  
  
“Well, what do you know!”  
  
“Told you so.” This time John didn’t push off with as much force, so he drifted for a bit. He took the time to pull out a flashlight from a vest pocket and turned it on.  
  
“Hey, Sheppard, shed some light over here, yeah? This isn’t my idea of a wild time, bouncing about in the dark.” John shined his flashlight at where McKay’s voice came from and found him slowly crossing the middle of the room, mildly flailing.  
  
“Aw, c’mon McKay, don’t be such a wimp.”  
  
“But I _am_ a wimp,” he said earnestly, “After ‘genius’ and ‘modest,’ ‘wimp’ is the best way to describe me. You’re the one who keeps me on your team anyway!”  
  
Ah, yes, the McKay Speech on Why He Shouldn’t Be Doing This. It tended to come up at least once per mission. “Whatever. Let’s just figure out what’s in here and if there’s anything strange, and then we’ll move on, okay? The next room might even have lights.”  
  
That last part made McKay whimper a bit. John grinned; he’d pulled at McKay’s proverbial pigtails, again.  
  
They examined the room as best they could, floating from one side to another and relying only on the flashlight. After a few rounds, “Nothing! Absolutely nothing,” McKay declared. “Can we go now?”  
  
“We haven’t looked at the stuff in the middle, though,” He trained his light towards structure in the middle in the room. It was even harder to make sense out of it with just the flashlight; he had no idea what it was. “Gimme a second,” he said, and pushed off.  
  
He hit the thing stomach-first. Okay, now he knew at least one thing: whatever it was, it had some pretty sharp edges. He refused to let out any exclamation of pain, though. He had his pride.  
  
But McKay must’ve heard something, because he asked, “You okay? I can’t see anything, since you’ve got the flashlight pointing at the ceiling--”  
  
“Stop panicking, I’m fine,” John said. He’d managed to hold onto a side and, his position secured, he shined the flashlight against his face for a second to prove just how fine he was.  
  
“Okay, so did you get to the thing? What is it?”  
  
“Not sure.” John flashed the light over it. There were plenty of keys. “A computer, I think?” He couldn’t find a screen, but maybe it displayed things via a hologram, like so many other Atlantis gadgets. There were no labels, of course. Atlantis ran mostly on intuition.  
  
He touched the surface with his elbow: metallic, cold.  
  
“Maybe you shouldn’t be touching it before we figure out what it does,” Rodney fretted.  
  
“How else we gonna figure out what it is?” He _was_ going to find out what was putting Atlantis out of order, even if it meant he had to trigger every piece of unknown Ancient technology.  
  
Over to the side were raised squares. He pressed a couple experimentally. “Select target, please,” a disembodied voice asked.  
  
Uh-oh.  
  
“Woah, what does it mean, target?” McKay asked.  
  
“On whom would you like to apply this function?” the voice chirped.  
  
“There’ll be no targets,” John said firmly. “Very kind of you to offer, though. Okay, McKay, we’re done here.”  
  
John tried to get a firmer grasp on the console so that he could push against it with more force, but the flashlight, which he was still holding onto, ended up pressing against one of the keys.  
  
“Target selected,” the voice declared.  
  
Things happened quickly, after that.  
  
John, even without looking at McKay, could imagine the panic etched over his face. Whatever happened, it would be his fault. He was the one that had insisted on coming here, against McKay’s every plea not to.  
  
He wouldn’t let McKay pay the price for his own mistakes.  
  
The console started to glow, in the general direction of McKay.  
  
John pushed hard and flung himself between them.  
  
He would never know how to explain what happened next. The best he ever did was comparing it to flicking off a light switch: one moment you could see, the next you couldn’t. Except that his entire _mind_ turned off.  
  
When he came to, he was he was lying on the ground with McKay, Ronon, and Teyla kneeling around him. His head hurt, but he didn’t care about that. It didn’t matter.  
  
What _did_ matter was the worry on McKay’s face.  
  
“Is he awake? He’s blinking, that’s got to mean he’s awake, right?” McKay asked, anxious. It hurt John to hear him that upset. Worse, it was because of _him_. His stomach twisted.  
  
“I think he is coming to,” Teyla said. Ronon nodded.  
  
Why were they paying so much attention to him, when there was McKay to consider? John reached out and touched McKay’s face, to comfort him. “I don’t matter. What about you? How are you?”  
  
But that only made McKay go from upset to horrified. "My god, what's _wrong_ with you?"  
  
John felt even worse.  
  



	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Isn’t it better this way?” Sheppard asked. “So it’s behaving now, don’t go looking for spilt milk to cry over. Let it be.” He had that half-smirk of his, like he knew all the secrets to enjoying oneself and that, if you followed his example, you would too. 
> 
> Rodney stared at Sheppard. “That’s what you’d normally say.”
> 
> “You told me to act normally, remember?” Sheppard reminded him.
> 
> “I know, I know, but it’s still weird!”

“You make it sound like he’s been brainwashed,” Keller said, her incredulity all too clear as she eyed Sheppard, who just kind of stared off disinterestedly and stood there in a very _not_ Sheppard way: straight and rigid and tall and where had the slouch gone? How could he be Sheppard without that slouch?  
  
“Well, maybe he _has_ been! Just look at him! He’s not normal!” And Rodney wouldn’t have thought it was possible, but Sheppard managed to look distressed at that while still keeping that straight face.   
  
“I keep telling you to forget about me,” Sheppard said, and, yup, it was still way too weird to hear that. “I’ll be fine if you are.” He looked at Rodney, sincere and _earnest_ , and Rodney couldn’t tell if his stomach flipped in reaction to the words or to Sheppard’s gaze.   
  
“See!” Rodney wailed. “That’s how he’s been talking ever since!”  
  
“After the machine’s laser hit him, you mean,” Keller sighed, covering a face with one hand. “I don’t know why these things still surprise me. I should be expecting stuff like this by now.”  
  
“It’s too late to expect! It’s happened and now we’ve got to cure it!”  
  
“Please.” And then Sheppard’s hand was curling around Rodney’s _arm_ , firm and decisive, and, oh god, why was Sheppard touching him? Rodney flushed. “You’re still upset. Tell me, please, what I can do to help.”  
  
Rodney gaped; he didn’t even know how to react.  
  
“I see what you mean,” Keller said grimly. “Even I can tell that’s not normal. Colonel, if you’d lie down in the examination table so that we can scan--“  
  
“What?” Sheppard asked, not even bothering to glance at the slightly-intimidating but innocuous white bed-table thing she’d indicated with a hand wave. “No.”  
  
Did he really just say that? There was a long silence. Rodney waited for an explanation, but when none came, he prompted, “Why not?”   
  
“She can’t tell me what to do,” he said, still standing like a cartoon-drawn soldier. He’d barely even moved since Rodney had urged him into the infirmary.   
  
“What-- that doesn’t even make sense!” Rodney exclaimed. “She’s a doctor! She’s doing it for your own good! Just lie down already.”  
  
“Okay,” Sheppard said, _agreeably_ , even, and hopped onto the table, his legs swinging over the edge.  
  
Keller and Rodney shared a worried glance. “That can’t be good, right? It’s not just me, right?” He asked.  
  
“No, it can’t.” Keller’s mouth set into a line as she started typing into a computer keyboard next to the table. Sheppard made no signs of complaint, and even laid down upon request. Green laser lines started to scan him up and down. “Tell me, did you get a closer look at the machine that did this?”  
  
“No, I left the weird brain-washing device without giving it a second look,” Rodney snapped. “Of course I examined it! I poked every button, spoke every command, made every threat I could think of, and all it’d say was, ‘Task has been completed’!”   
  
“It’s so strange,” Keller said. The green lasers stopped, and another set started up when she tapped at the keyboard again. “Why would Atlantis have a brainwashing machine?”  
  
“I don’t know! Who can understand half the things the Ancients did? Maybe it’s a learning device and we used it wrong, or maybe they thought it was a good idea at the time. But that doesn’t matter. We’ve got to fix him!”  
  
Sheppard looked at him again, plaintively, and this… thing, hot and overwhelming, shot through him, head to toe, setting all his hairs on end. He felt the warmth of Sheppard’s grasp all over, just for a moment; Rodney clutched a hand over it.   
  
In the past, Sheppard had yanked at him, pulled him over, shoved him down, and even covered him, but always in the context of fights and of saving lives. Never like _that_. Rodney didn’t know how to describe “that” either. Like a request? Like a promise? Like there was more where that came from and all he had to do was ask.  
  
That did not feel like a safe train of thought, so Rodney was greatly relieved when he sighted Teyla and Ronon coming in. A distraction! “Hey, good that you’re here, any news?” Rodney babbled, wanting his spoken words to cancel out the thoughts in his head.  
  
Teyla was still in her black fatigues, her hair sticking out everywhere, and Ronon was frowning in a way that made Rodney feel guilty and scared, though for what, he didn’t know.   
  
“How is he?” Teyla asked, moving faster than ought to be humanly possible. She stopped at the table where Sheppard was still lying very unrebeliously as the scans did their thing.   
  
“Not very well; he hasn’t shown any signs of improvement,” Keller said, quirking the side of mouth in a half-frown. “Sorry.”   
  
Ronon slunk in, in that shadow-like way he had, and eased towards Sheppard. Rodney never really understood how it worked, but even he could see that Ronon and Sheppard had a more laconic mode of communication. He was pretty sure they could have entire conversations with body language and that he’d never get what they were “saying.”   
In fact, he was expecting them to have such a conversation right now, but instead, Sheppard was pointedly ignoring Ronon, who stood right next to him. Sheppard stared instead at _Rodney_ , like no one else existed.   
  
It was freaky. Freakier than a ship full of Wraith freaky. If Sheppard was so eager to receive orders, perhaps Rodney should command him to stop freaking him out so much.   
  
Rodney froze, horrified at his spontaneous thought. No. No, no, and more no. There would be no commands of any kind. None.  
  
Ronon hung out for another minute or so next to Sheppard before retreating over to where Keller and Rodney were huddled; Teyla joined them. “He’s gotten worse,” Ronon noted, voice low.   
  
“Oh, please, don’t say that,” Rodney begged. “It’s bad enough as it is!”   
  
“I’m not worse,” Sheppard called out. “I swear!”  
  
An awkward silence passed between the four of them. “Did he,” Teyla asked, sounding strained, “say that merely because you essentially asked him to not be worse?”  
  
Rodney groaned. “I don’t know,” he whispered. “Maybe. I think so. That’s what I’m scared of. That’s why I haven’t told him to stop staring at me like that. What if he took it like a royal decree?”   
  
“At any rate,” Keller said, “Ronon, Teyla, did you find anything else in the basement? Any clues?”  
  
“Unfortunately, we found nothing,” Teyla shook her head. “After the lights and the gravity returned, we managed to complete an appraisal of the area, but there was nothing out of the ordinary. The rooms were mostly empty.”  
  
“Wasn’t even dusty,” Ronon added.   
  
“What about the machine?” Rodney did not have to specify which. “Did you look at it?”  
  
“Yes, we did,” Teyla answered. “But we were unable to activate it. It must be one of those devices that can only be triggered by those with the Ancient gene.”  
  
“Creepy,” Rodney said under his breath.  
  
“Probably better that way,” Ronon said. “Wouldn’t want anyone else to end up like Sheppard.”  
  
“True,” Keller rubbed at her temple. “But that means we still don’t have any information as to what happened to him. Ah, wait a second--” she paused for a second, reading results off the screen. Rodney waited for her face to light up, or something, with good news, but her frown only deepened. “Great. The scans don’t reveal anything. But I guess we can’t objectively measure brainwashing, not even with Ancient CAT scanners.”   
  
“Perhaps if we knew why the Ancients built the machine, we could figure out how to reverse its effects,” Teyla suggested.   
  
“You mean _besides_ brainwashing?” Rodney asked.   
  
“Surely there is more to it than that,” she said. “I could go through Atlantis’ database and see if there are any references to it; there may even be an explanation on how it works.”  
  
“Yes! Good one! An instruction manual!” Rodney said, lighting up. “That would actually be great, I’ll go look now--“  
  
“I’ll go with you,” John declared, jumping off the table.  
  
“What? But why?” Rodney asked, horrified. “There’s no need!“  
  
“Exactly,” Keller agreed, stepping in between Rodney and Sheppard, “And as your doctor, I absolutely refuse to let you get out of here until I’ve run some more tests and after _that_ , I’m sending you off to see Heightmeyer. You can forget doing anything else until then.”  
  
Sheppard looked so calm Rodney thought he was going to accept. But then, just as calmly, he said: “Anyone that tries to stop me from going with Rodney _will_ regret it.”   
  
For a moment, no one spoke. All that could be heard was the hum of the machinery as they all stared at Sheppard. Rodney especially. Had Sheppard really just threatened bodily violence? Just because he wanted to tag along? From his sharp glare, Rodney was pretty sure Sheppard meant it. Oh, _god_. “I’m staying, I’m staying,” Rodney babbled. “You don’t need to hurt anyone, I’m staying, so it’s all okay, right? No hitting anyone!”  
  
“…I see that we need to solve this as fast as possible,” Teyla observed wryly. “Ronon, would you accompany me?”  
  
Ronon looked hard at Sheppard for a good long while, like he was trying to decipher great mysteries. Rodney so would not want to be on the receiving end of that look, but Sheppard, again, did not seem to notice besides Rodney. “Not really my thing.”  
  
Teyla touched Ronon on his upper arm and spoke gently. “The more people helping, the sooner we may be able to heal him.”  
  
He gave Sheppard one last lingering gaze before nodding. “’Kay.”  
  
Rodney wanted to clutch on to them and beg them to stay and not leave him alone with this crazy, scary Sheppard. And he wasn’t the only scared one; Keller had hunched off into the corner. “I’m going to draw blood now,” she said, her voice going off into higher pitches. “That’s okay, right? I can do that?”  
  
Rodney looked at Sheppard, who looked back at him like he was waiting for an answer. “Oh, you can’t expect me to tell you what to do!”  
  
“No,” John told Keller.  
  
Okay, that was no good, either. Rodney bit his lips. He didn’t want to tell Sheppard what to do, but Keller was going to need the blood samples to make him better. Sheppard _needed_ to give that blood. And telling him to cooperate wouldn’t be like giving an order, was it? He’d just be giving Sheppard permission to do something. It wasn’t like he was infringing on Sheppard’s free will.   
  
Rodney opened his mouth to say “Yeah, do it,” but his vocal chords let out just a guttural “Ah.” Okay, he was too freaked out to even speak. That was a new. He didn’t like it. But Keller and Sheppard remained at a stand still, so he tried again. “Um, let her do it.” As an afterthought, he added: “Please.”  
  
Sheppard was much more cooperative after that, unfortunately, rolling up his sleeves and not protesting at all as Keller drew his blood. Rodney felt sicker than he had all day, even more so than when he’d puked in the basement. Was Sheppard really following his orders?  
  
“Okay,” Keller said after she’d gotten the samples, sounding normal again. “I’ll analyze these, then. In the meanwhile, McKay, could you take him to Heightmeyer? Maybe she can do more for him than I can. Psychology _really_ isn’t my field.”   
  
As far as Rodney could tell, Sheppard didn’t have a reaction to Keller talking about him like he wasn’t there. He just kept on looking at Rodney. What, did he want a prompt or something? “Don’t you mind that we keep talking about what to do with you?” Rodney asked.   
  
“Not really,” John said, shrugging. “But I could mind, if you want me to.”  
  
“That’s-- no. No, there’s no need, don’t even think about it.” Just how much was Sheppard willing to do for him? Rodney was too scared to think about it, much less ask.   
  
“Okay.” Sheppard nodded. “And anyway, as far as I can tell, you want me to do what they tell me to, so that’s good enough for me.”  
  
“Don’t say that!” Rodney exclaimed. It implied that he couldn’t do _anything_ without Sheppard interpreting it as a demand. Who knew, even yawning could be taken as an order to get his bed ready.  
  
“I shouldn’t let them do things to me?” Sheppard asked.   
  
“No! Let them! Wait, no! That doesn’t mean you have to do it!”  
  
Sheppard frowned. “So, again, I shouldn’t let them do things to me?”  
  
“Argh! Okay, fine! Let them! Let them do whatever they want! It’s for your own good! Damn it, you shouldn’t keep making me tell you what to do!”   
  
“Should I wait for orders, then?”  
  
“Oh-- just shut up. Shut up. I can’t take it anymore.” There it was, a real a command. But this one was also for Sheppard’s own good: the less he talked, the less he could trip Rodney into accidentally ordering him around. And anyway, if he had to listen to anymore of Sheppard’s manipulations into being bossed around, Rodney would pull out the little that remained of his hair.   
  


*

  
  
“Would you like some tea?” Heightmeyer offered, lifting the white porcelain kettle. Rodney and Sheppard sat on the couch opposite her. It was cushy and plump, the best seat in Atlantis, but Rodney couldn’t appreciate it. He kept shifting, unable to get comfortable.   
  
“No thanks, any more caffeine and I’ll run and jump out the window,” Rodney said. And, more to the point, he didn’t like tea. If it’d been coffee, though, he’d have accepted; he could never say no to more coffee. “Not literally, of course. That’s a lot of glass. I’d get cut. And then fall to my death. Not the way I want to go, no.”   
  
“How about you, Colonel?” Heightmeyer asked. Huh. Rodney hadn’t noticed that Sheppard hadn’t answered. He hadn’t even thought about whether or not Sheppard would _want_ tea.   
  
Sheppard looked at him with the same “Can I?” expression he’d used in the infirmary. “It’s tea!” Rodney exclaimed. “Just tea! You make up your own mind if you want any or not! It’s not up to me!”  
  
“Okay,” Sheppard said. “In that case, no, I don’t want any.”  
  
Rodney buried his face into his hands.   
  
“Dr. Keller wasn’t exaggerating,” Heightmeyer said. She’d put down the kettle, pouring for no one. The three tea cups stayed empty on the glass table between them. “He really is following your orders.”  
  
“Oh, hold on a second, that makes it sound like I’m _giving_ him orders, and I’m not, I am so not,” Rodney insisted. And what would he order Sheppard to do, anyway, besides shutting up, since he could get obnoxious?   
  
“I didn’t mean that,” Heightmeyer said gently. “But that’s how he’s acting. Colonel, I’m going to ask you some questions. Do you need permission from Dr. McKay first, or--“  
  
Of _course_ , Sheppard looked at him.   
  
“I can’t take this anymore.” Who was this stranger and where had the real Sheppard gone? He wanted the real Sheppard back; he’d have known that to do. “I can’t make all your decisions for you!”   
  
“Maybe if you told him to act naturally,” Heightmeyer suggested.   
  
“But-- I don’t want to tell him what to do--“  
  
“Yes, and that’s good, but you’ll have to, won’t you, until we can get him back to normal. Do you think he’ll do anything without asking you first? Unless you want him to ask for permission for everything, even going to the bathroom, you should at least give him general orders.”  
  
“Oh--” No. Not that. He definitely did not want to be responsible for when Sheppard went to the bathroom. “Okay.” Rodney took a deep breath. “Sheppard. Do what she said. You know,” Rodney fidgeted. “About acting naturally. Act like you would’ve, before you decided my word is law.”  
  
And then Sheppard slouched, his shoulders slumping, and just like that, it was like he was himself again. Maybe all of him was back, and they could leave this behind them and go back to their usual Wraith crisis du jour. That’d be nice; not even Wraith were as scary as an obedient Sheppard.  
  
Heightmeyer leaned forward, placing her elbows on her knees. “Tell me, Colonel, how far does your… loyalty to Dr. McKay go?”  
  
“Pretty far,” Sheppard said. Rodney’s face fell. So much for things easily solved. Though if he hadn’t known better, he would’ve thought that this was just another one of Sheppard’s flippant replies, the kind he dispatched to friends and foes alike. It was just so normal.  
  
“Would you kill for him?” Heightmeyer asked.   
  
“What!” Rodney jumped to the edge of his seat, nearly falling off to the floor. “What kind of question is that! Okay, so when we’re in a mission, he might kill someone before they shoot me, but that’s what we do, it doesn’t count--”   
  
“I asked the Colonel.” Heightmeyer kept her eyes on Sheppard.  
  
If the question was bad enough, what followed was worse.  
  
“Sure,” Sheppard said, without even a trace of hesitation. Rodney knew, because he looked _really_ hard for any signs of doubt. There were none. He could’ve been talking about his weekend plans, with that kind of face.   
  
Rodney knew, in his gut, that he wasn’t referring to a kill-or-be-killed scenario. Before he could tell Sheppard to never, ever do that, Heightmeyer asked another question: “Would you die for him?”  
  
He didn’t want to hear Sheppard’s answer. He heard it anyway: “Yeah.”  
  
“This is torture,” Rodney muttered, slumping back against the couch and sliding downwards.   
  
In his peripheral vision, he saw Sheppard snapping his head towards him. “I could say I wouldn’t,” he offered.   
  
“Does he have to keep talking?” Rodney asked miserably. He wouldn’t mind repeating the “shut up” he’d told Sheppard earlier. It’d been wrong of him, but it worked. And it’d be nice, to not have to listen to his slave-drivel.  
  
“No, I’ve gotten an idea of… the extent of the Colonel’s condition.” Heightmeyer sat back against her couch, looking at Sheppard contemplatively. Her fingers drummed against her crossed arms.  
  
“Not sure we needed a psychologist to know he’s gone insane.”  
  
“Hey,” Sheppard objected. “I’m right here, you know.”  
  
“You’re just saying that because I told you to act normal,” Rodney said, disgusted.  
  
“…Should I stop?”  
  
“No, no, the acting normal continues, there will be no stopping of the normal,” Rodney sat up, shaking his hands as vehemently as he shook his head. This wasn’t much better than the blank slate from before, but it was still an improvement. Rodney liked improvements.  
  
“His condition is pretty serious, Dr. McKay,” Heightmeyer said. “We could try therapy, but I’m not sure I could give him the treatment he needs; if this was caused by alterations in his brain, we need to know first what those were. And even then, psycho-analysis might not be enough.”  
  
“It did do a number on him,” Rodney lamented, watching Sheppard. He seemed bored, or at least pretended to be, scratching at his thigh absentmindedly.   
  
“Unfortunately, until he shows any significant improvement, I think he’ll have to step down from his duties.”  
  
“That okay with you?” Sheppard asked Rodney casually.  
  
“It’s not up me, is it!” Rodney said. But from the mood in the room, it seemed that it was. He sighed. “Not like he’s at all fit for service like this, anyway. He’d just keep asking my opinion before making any decisions. And I definitely do _not_ want to be in charge of the military on Atlantis.”  
  
Heightmeyer nodded. “I’ll let Colonel Carter know, then. “  
  
“No, I have to talk to her anyway. I think it’s better she hears it from me because then I can, er, tell her exactly what happened. So that she doesn’t get the wrong idea.” God, he was now going to tell one of the most brilliant, the most stunning, and the best women in the galaxy, maybe even the universe, that he was a primitive, colonial-era man with his very own slave. Who also happened to be the military head of the base.  
  
Yes, he definitely wanted her to hear _his_ version.   
  


*

  
  
  
“Yeah, I’ve heard,” Sam said, her shiny pretty hair catching the light just so.  
  
Rodney’s face fell. “But-- I _just_ talked to Heightmeyer--“  
  
“Word gets around fast here, McKay; you know how it is. The smaller the base, the higher the gossip’s velocity.” Sam covered her lovely face behind an equally lovely hand. “This couldn’t have happened at a worse moment.”  
  
“I can think of worse, actually,” Rodney said, starting to count them off his fingers. “During a Wraith attack, a Replicator attack, a simultaneous Wraith and Replicator attack, a virus outbreak, imminent self-destruction, or a locust infestation, though we haven’t had that one yet, thankfully.“  
  
“It’s not that, McKay,” Sam said, shaking her head. She was sitting on the front of her desk, and Rodney stood as close as he dared. Sheppard stood close, too, right in Rodney’s very personal and private space. Rodney couldn’t tell him to bug off, so he just glared at him occasionally, hoping he’d get the message. “He needs to be fighting for his position, before any more changes are put into place; he can’t afford to be out of the loop right now.”   
  
Sheppard, though, kept on doing what he had been ever since they came into Sam’s office: rocking on his feet, like there was no such thing as ‘worry.’ “It’s cool,” Sheppard said. “I’ve got other priorities now.”  
  
“How is that normal?” Rodney complained. “Since when would you ever give up on Atlantis?!”   
  
Sheppard stopped balancing and frowned. “But you wanted me to step down from my duties, right? Should I refuse to be put on suspension?”  
  
“That’s not the point!” Rodney exclaimed, slapping his hand against the desk, then winced at how it hurt.   
  
“Okay, I’m sorry, but you keep contradicting yourself.” Sheppard peered at him, getting a tiny bit closer. “Should I--“  
  
“Act normal! But accept the suspension!”  
  
Only then did Rodney realize that Sam was watching them with horror. Or fascination. Or fascinated horror. “Oh-- I only told him those things because then I’d have to tell him when to go to the bathroom, and that’s not dignified for either one of us, so it was the lesser of two evils. Really.”  
  
“I’m… sure you’re doing your best, McKay.”  
  
Rodney was filled with warmth. Sam believed in him.   
  
“I guess that confirms it, then. I’ll have to call in Major Lorne to substitute the Colonel as the military head.” Sam sighed. “I wanted to put it off, in case this got solved quickly, but it’s too dangerous to leave Atlantis without clearly defined leaders. And then…”  
  
She frowned, which, like everything else she did, was beautiful. But it still worried Rodney. “And then?” He prompted.  
  
“Nothing,” she said, flashing him a tight smile. “I just have to inform Stargate Command and the IOA what’s happened. Sorry to have to put this on your shoulders, but please continue to take care of the Colonel until he’s himself again.”   
  
“You can count on me!” Rodney said, tapping himself proudly on his chest. “I’ll take the best care of him you’ve ever see! Not that you see often people taking care of Colonels, but still! I’ll take great care of him!”  
  
“I’m sure you will,” Sam said.  
  
As he left, with Sheppard in tow, Rodney wondered briefly if the change in command would have any serious impact, but didn’t think about it much. It wasn’t as if these kinds of things applied to him. As a scientist, the military had no bearing on him.   
  
  


*

  
  
“Where’re we going now?” Sheppard asked. He walked next to Rodney, sort of, but at a half-step behind. Maybe he wasn’t really and Rodney was reading too much into everything.   
  
“The control room.” Double the staff must’ve been there, working overtime to keep Atlantis in order, yelling out bits of data and Zelenka having to orchestrate them all. Poor souls, without Rodney to guide them! “Just because you’ve gone bonkers doesn’t mean Atlantis put a stop to being all messed up.” But Rodney stopped in his tracks and swerved to face Sheppard. “Wait a second, you’re asking me a random question? Can you do that?”  
  
“Why not?”   
  
“Uh, right! Very good point, why not, it’s just a question, there’s no reason why you can’t do that. In fact, it’s better if you can-- maybe the effects are wearing off, eh?”  
  
“Maybe,” Sheppard grinned, and with that Rodney knew that he wasn’t getting better at all. “About the control room-- don’t you think it’d be better if you went back to your room and took a rest? Slept a bit?” Sheppard suggested.  
  
Rest. Rodney had been running and floating around so much today that he’d forgotten that such a thing even existed. Pillows. He missed fluffy, white, soft pillows. “Yeah, it _would_ be nice-- hey, wait! You can tell me what to do? How does that work? You think I’m going to start obeying you? Because, let me tell you, I’m not--”  
  
“Wasn’t a command,” Sheppard pointed out, pulling that expression he used when he wanted to look innocent. But Rodney knew better. “It was a suggestion. And you could use some rest; you’re falling over.”  
  
The existence of magnetic monopoles would be easier to understand than this Sheppard. “You can ask me questions and make suggestions, but how does that work with the rest of your craziness? … Oh, jeez, it’s to treat me better, isn’t it.” Rodney covered his face. “You’re trying to give me what you think I need.”  
  
Sheppard shrugged which, under other circumstances, could’ve meant “yeah” or a “maybe” or “I don’t really care.” But with the brainwashing and the changes in behavior, could he take it at face value? Maybe Sheppard was hiding something.  
  
Deciphering all these nuances in Sheppard’s behavior made his head hurt worse than that time during his first doctorate when he’d been awake fifty hours in a row and, after five contiguous cups of coffee, tried to make sense out of _Solaris_ (the original, of course. The remake was rubbish).   
  
“Um. That’s nice of you, I guess, in a tremendously creepy way, but we’re still going to the control room. The way these waiting-to-happen catastrophes go, the longer I put off finding a solution, the more sleep I lose later, fixing everything that went wrong in the meanwhile. And I’m not setting myself up for any more all-nighters than I have to. I’m not as spry as I used to be, you know.”  
  
He was pretty damn sure that Sheppard pouted. Like, literally pouted, all because he, Rodney, was refusing to take it easy. Good god. Why were there people in the universe? Why couldn’t everything consist of magnificently logical, straightforward math equations? Those made sense, unlike stupid human behavior.  
  
Rodney started to walk again, quickly. The control room needed him.  
  
When they got there, it was almost empty. Calm, even. A handful people milled about, some chatting to one another, others playing Wraith, the Atlantis equivalent of Pac-Man.   
  
That didn’t seem right. It was, Rodney now remembered, the late-night shift, but there were things to be done! Panicking to be had! Atlantis was going haywire, Sheppard was out of commission, and the best anyone could think to do was make a yellow-headed ball eat alien vampires? Just how lost where they without him?   
  
“Doesn’t look like they need you here,” Sheppard quipped.  
  
“You’re just saying that because you’re selfish and you want me to rest so that _you_ feel better.” Rodney found the closest and most in-charge looking person around. He couldn’t remember his name, his post, or even how long he’d been working on Atlantis, but Rodney was pretty sure he’d seen him, whoever he was, head the control room before, when things were relatively peaceful. “How’s Atlantis doing? Anything get worse since we came back from the basement?”  
  
The maybe-in-charge guy flickered his gaze over the bored staff. “Everything is just fine, sir. Better than ever, in fact.”  
  
Rodney turned to share a startled look with Sheppard, but then he remembered that Sheppard wasn’t all, or even partially, there, and couldn’t properly partake in being stunned. “What do you mean, better than ever! It was on the verge of chaos! …Okay, maybe not chaos, but it was getting ugly.”  
  
“That’s the thing,” the guy said. “While you were down there, the gravity and lights returned to the area. We didn’t have to do a thing.”  
  
“I know they came back when we were down there; I saw for myself!” Rodney snapped. “It happened right after Sheppard got hit by,” but stopped, because he didn’t want to say out loud ‘a slave-making beam,’ if only because it sounded so ridiculous. “Right after the accident. Luckily I wasn’t all that far from the ground when the gravity came back, so it didn’t hurt _very_ much. It hurt, though! And my tailbone is still sore. I’m lucky I didn’t hit my head and die.”   
  
“Uh huh,” the guy said. He looked like he was holding back a yawn. No wonder he only got the lazy shifts; as an in-charge-guy, he sucked. “At any rate, all the other problem areas also went back to normal. We’ve got everything under control now, sir. I don’t think the city will be rebelling any time soon.”  
  
Rodney snuck another glance at Sheppard who, again, didn’t seem interested in the conversation, staring off at someone’s game of Wraith. He missed the old Sheppard; he’d have been astounded by the city’s weirdness and would’ve wanted answers. Or maybe not. Maybe he’d have just said that it was better this way and they should get a good night’s sleep and let their hairs turn grey for problems that existed outside their heads.  
  
Instead, here was this enslaved, passive Sheppard entirely under his control.   
  
“That makes no sense!” Rodney said. “It was getting worse and worse, before! There were anti-gravity fields, for crying out loud! Why would it all that and then suddenly stop?! What, did it get tired, or something?”   
  
“I don’t know what to tell you, sir. Who really understands Atlantis? Maybe it decided to give up the fight.”  
  
“What fight?” Rodney asked. “There was a fight? Why didn’t anyone tell me?”  
  
“Sorry, I was being figurative. I kept thinking it was like a kid throwing a temper tantrum, but that’s just me, sir. What I meant was, perhaps Atlantis was having problems we’ll never understand and fixed them on its own.”  
  
“Stupid city,” Rodney muttered. Just before coming to Atlantis, the Canadian government had thrown a lot of money at him to help with national security. He should’ve taken it. Not even Toronto could compare with Atlantis for sheer incomprehensibility.   
  
“Isn’t it better this way?” Sheppard asked. “So it’s behaving now, don’t go looking for spilt milk to cry over. Let it be.” He had that half-smirk of his, like he knew all the secrets to enjoying oneself and that, if you followed his example, you would too.   
  
Rodney stared at Sheppard. “That’s what you’d normally say.”  
  
“You told me to act normally, remember?” Sheppard reminded him.  
  
“I know, I know, but it’s still weird!”  
  
“Sir,” the sucky-guy-in-charge said. “I believe that the Colonel has a point: if things are running smoothly, then maybe you should let it be, instead of getting worked up over nothing.”  
  
“Nothing? I’ll show you nothing,” Rodney said, going to one of the many free computer terminals, opening up the relevant programs. Rodney started muttering to himself. “I’ll bet you fifty dollars and a pack of razor blades that the code hasn’t changed. The problem’s gotta still be in there, somewhere, waiting to jump out!”   
  
He hunched up his shoulders as he concentrated on his screen. It didn’t feel good, as far as positions went, but he was used to it. He needed to be as scrunched up as possible to think, like a sponge squeezing out its water.   
  
He was tapping the screen, doing search functions for key sequences, the base of his spine starting to hurt more from his earlier fall and bad position, when something brushed against his shoulders.  
  
Rodney very nearly jumped out of skin. “Oh sweet Jesus what--” He whipped his head around and saw Sheppard. Just plain old Sheppard, skirting his hands lightly over Rodney’s back and shoulders.  
  
“Hey,” Sheppard said, like a greeting, his fingernails raking over Rodney’s neck.   
  
“Geez, you scared me,” Rodney panted, trying to calm back down, Sheppard still kneading his back. Eventually his heartbeat returned to a human levels, and he sighed. Now that he no longer feared suddenly being eaten by aliens, the pseudo-massage was kind of nice. Some of his long-term tension melted away.  
  
And then Sheppard hit _that_ spot, right beneath his left shoulder blade, and Rodney shivered all over.   
  
Okay. Maybe it was more than a bit nice.   
  
It was also weird. “What are you doing?”   
  
“You’re a stress ball,” Sheppard said, as if that were enough of an explanation.  
  
“Ah,” Rodney replied, his eyes closing. His back hummed with pleasure.  
  
“You’ve been at it all day.” As Sheppard’s hand inched towards that place where back meets neck, something stirred within Rodney. This really _was_ weird, but letting Sheppard give him a massage couldn’t be bad, could it? “And it’s almost tomorrow. I know it’s against your workaholic religion, but won’t you think better after at least a nap?”  
  
“B, but, I have to solve this,” Rodney protested weakly. He bent his head, encouraging Sheppard to massage more of his neck. It felt so _good_.  
  
“It’s quiet now, isn’t it?” Sheppard’s tone too was subdued, calming Rodney. “If you don’t get some rest in now, how are you gonna solve the crisis, when it comes?”   
  
Rest. Jesus. Just thinking of it relaxed Rodney. “Yeah, it’s not as if anything’s happening,” he mumbled, wanting to say the words out loud, as if would justify his giving up. “A few hours wouldn’t hurt, I guess. Ah, yes, to the right-- and maybe tomorrow morning it’ll go back to being screwed up. I can fix it better if all the symptoms are out in the open.”   
  
“That’s the spirit,” John encouraged, giving one last squeeze.  
  
Rodney missed his hands the moment they left his skin, and rubbed the back of his neck, as if to get back the feeling he’d just lost. He looked up, hand still massaging himself, and then froze, seeing all the other people around. Jesus, he’d just _forgotten_ there was anyone else.   
  
He glanced around quickly, then breathed a sigh of relief. No one seemed to have noticed, not even the incompetent in-charge guy who was in the middle of a intense tête-à-tête with a brunette a few meters away. Rodney would have to find out his name and get him demoted.  
  
For now, Rodney swiveled on his chair to face Sheppard. “That’s not what you’d normally do,” he hissed.  
  
“But you liked it,” Sheppard protested, and Rodney couldn’t argue with that.   
  
“Forget this.” Rodney got up. “I’m obviously in no state to be thinking, I’m going to bed.”  
  
Their footsteps echoed as they walked through the corridors. No one was about, making the hallways feel unnaturally wide. He was alone with this Sheppard that wasn’t Sheppard and gave random massages. “You know,” Rodney tried to make the weirdness go away through sheer volume of words. “All of us, we live here, and we take it for granted that the basic things are going to work and that we won’t wake up suffocated, but can we really think like that? We barely understand how Atlantis works--“  
  
Usually when Rodney went off into ramble-mode, the few times it occurred to him to check his audience’s reaction he found them glassy-eyed and far, far away. He checked now; Sheppard was looking with great interest.   
  
That was just so wrong. Sheppard had made an art out of ignoring him.  
  
“Don’t worry about the city,” Sheppard said. “Just tell it what to do, it’ll be fine.”  
  
Of course Sheppard, in this state, would think that it was natural to be ordered about. “Shut up. Just shut up,” he said, drained. He couldn’t even pretend there were any altruistic motives behind that command, but he couldn’t listen to Sheppard talk about controlling and ordering. It was too depressing.  
  
It was silent then, except for the sound of their footsteps. It felt like his room was on the other side of Atlantis-- no, on the other side of the Pegasus Galaxy. So it was a pretty big relief to get to his room and see his bed. “Oh, sweet, sweet bed, how I’ve missed you,” Rodney cooed, flopping straight into it, still in his black fatigues and boots. Sleep took precedence over proper sleeping fashion.  
  
He was ready to zonk out into merciful blankness but he heard scuffling. Damn it, couldn’t he sleep already? Or did he have to somehow let Sheppard know that he was ‘dismissed’ for the day? Or, worse… “You’re not going to insist on staying with me while I sleep, are you?”  
  
“Better that way,” Sheppard said simply.   
  
“And what services do you think you’ll do for me while I sleep? Wake me up from nightmares?!”  
  
“Don’t knock it; it’s a valuable service.”  
  
“Argh, fine. Do what you want. I don’t care.” Rodney buried his face into his pillow, but this time, he couldn’t sleep because there _wasn’t_ any scuffling. He kept his face buried, so his words came out muffled. “Please tell me you don’t plan to stand there the whole night.”  
  
“Nah. Just thought you might want to shower first.”  
  
“Shower?” He looked up. Sheppard was at the window, looking out at the night. “But I’m tired and sleepy and I’m not that dirty, just a little scuffed from the clinging to walls, but those walls were cleaner than I am, anyway, so, all in all, I don’t need a shower.”  
  
“Not to get clean,” Sheppard said. “To relax. Y’know.”  
  
“I don’t _do_ relaxing. I panic, I fret, I sleep, I might even nap, but I don’t relax. And now I’m going to sleep. If you’re going to insist on staying, take one of the couches.”  
  
“McKay.” It was the first time Sheppard had called him by name since the accident. “It wouldn’t kill you to try. And the Atlantis showers can be pretty sweet.”  
  
“Sweet” was an understatement, as per Sheppard’s specialty. The showers here were very likely the best of the Ancient’s creations; just thinking of the pressure, the heat, and the water made the side of Rodney’s mouth curl.  
  
Dilemma: he wanted to sleep and he wanted a shower. Why couldn’t he have both? Though, actually, he could. Just not simultaneously, but having them in sequential order wasn’t bad, either. “You know what, I’ll take that shower after all.”  
  
“Good,” Sheppard grinned.  
  
“It’s nothing to get excited over,” Rodney said, half-dragging himself out of bed. He was entering his bathroom when he heard steps behind him. “Oh, oh no you don’t. You stay there; I can do this on my own.”  
  
Sheppard scowled but didn’t challenge him. If there was one thing good about the slave thing, Rodney had to concede, it was how the choice was ultimately his. God, how many irritatingly pedantic and useless arguments he could’ve skipped with Sheppard! This way, Rodney got to decide, and that was that. Neat, simple, efficient; like a geometry proof.  
  
(Of course, some of the times Sheppard had argued with him, he’d been right, but that wasn’t the point, and it wasn’t as if Rodney was wrong all that often.)  
  
He pulled off his clothes routinely, letting them all fall to the floor, and stepped under the triangle of shower heads (the Ancients were geniuses, no doubt about it). The water came on at the perfect the right temperature, just like always, because Atlantis somehow knew exactly what Rodney wanted in a shower.   
  
The water was close to scalding, but it was a good kind of hurt, the one where you begged for more.  
  
He stood there, his elbows bracing his head, breathing in and out slowly, muscles clenching all over. He let himself feel the drops fall on him, sharp, strong, like a massage, and it’d be better if they were actual hands, strong, demanding hands, that could knead him mercilessly, so much that he’d stop thinking, and for once he wouldn’t mind, no, he wouldn’t, it’d feel amazing--  
  
And then strong hands _were_ holding him, from behind, one over his hipbone and another over his ribcage.   
  
Rodney screamed.  
  
But not for long, because the hand on his hipbone flew up to his mouth, silencing the high-pitched squeal. “It’s me, McKay,” Sheppard’s voice said against his ear.  
  
A quick glance downwards revealed that, in fact, it was indeed Sheppard’s hand covering his mouth. Rodney could tell from how the hair on it, trailing from arm into wrist and peppering into the hand itself. Not to mention those raised tendons. No one but Sheppard had tendons like those.  
  
Rodney’s heart still pounded from the fright, but it didn’t get a chance to slow down because then Sheppard’s grip over his mouth loosened and he started to rub his _lips_ with his thumb. It was suddenly hard to breathe. “Shhhh,” Sheppard murmured against into his ear, tickling it, and, oh god, that was Sheppard’s body pressing up behind him, Sheppard’s nipples against his back, and Jesus, that could only be Sheppard’s dick nestling into his ass. This wasn’t happening, there was no way this was actually happening.  
  
Rodney couldn’t help it: he closed his eyes and shuddered, pressing back against Sheppard, hopelessly stimulated by the almost-burning water running down his front and by the way Sheppard languidly rubbed circles around his hip, tantalizingly near his ass and pelvis. It was good, no, it was fucking amazing, and it’d been a long, long while since Rodney’s last time and they could do it right here and now--  
  
“They,” he thought. But this wasn’t really “they,” was it. Because Sheppard, Rodney managed to remember, wasn’t in his right mind and this wasn’t some harmless wet dream or porn video. This was a friend. “Stop,” Rodney gasped, though he couldn’t pull himself away. He hoped a command would be enough. “Stop.”  
  
Sheppard stopped the caressing (and, oh god, Rodney already half-regretted making him stop), but he was still there hugging him from behind, and that was even more maddening. It made Rodney want to start all over again, and that was not the point. So not the point. “Let me go,” he choked.  
  
Sheppard did let him go, stepping away backwards, and that was a good thing, because Rodney, even half-brainless from horniness, couldn’t bear to look at him.   
  
“You didn’t like it?” Sheppard asked. Rodney could hear his sullenness.   
  
“No! It blew my mind-- I mean--” He couldn’t admit that all he wanted was more and more and more until he had it all; it’d be an invitation for Sheppard to start all over again. “You’re doing that thing. Where you’re acting on what you think I want.”  
  
“I don’t think you want it,” and, why, _why_ did Sheppard have to say that in such a deep tone? It just made Rodney want to call off the calling off. “I know you do.”  
  
Rodney pointedly kept his back to Sheppard, since the least he could do was hide his hard-on. “What, do I have ‘wants hot shower sex’ stamped on my forehead?”  
  
“You might as well.”  
  
“Oh, god, when did that happen?” Rodney hid his face in his hands. It’d been a long time since the last time he’d gotten laid, but he’d never thought the need would hit him this hard. Typical. He could go for months caught up in ideas and thoughts, ignoring his body its needs, and the next thing he knew, those needs made themselves clear in the worst way possible. “Get out of here. Put your clothes on. Go to sleep anywhere but in my bed. And, god, just leave me alone.”  
  
Sheppard could be quiet when he wanted to. Rodney didn’t hear him go over the water hitting tiled floor. He waited, tense, counting down from 300 to be sure he wouldn’t catch Sheppard still leaving, before he dared to turn around.  
  
He was alone. Thank god.  
  
He wasn’t in the mood for a shower anymore, but there was something else he had to take care of. He pumped his dick, fast and urgent, using the water as a bad but acceptable lubricant. Atlantis, as always, knew and cooled the water down a few degrees so that he wouldn’t be rubbing near-scalding water directly onto his dick.  
  
He tried to not think of Sheppard, but it was hard not to visualize that smirk and wonder what it’d be like if it were possible, and what it’d be like to have Sheppard, the real Sheppard, up against the wall, groaning and wanting and Rodney came in no time at all. He felt filthy.   
  
He dried off and put back on every item he’d left on the floor, even the vest. Fully dressed, he peeked through the doorway. Sheppard, with all his clothes on, had settled on the floor without even a blanket to lie on. Rodney briefly considered telling him to get himself a pillow, at least, but he didn’t want to talk to him.  
  
Rodney fell into his bed and fell asleep at once. It’d been an exhausting day.

 

*

 

In his dreams, Rodney worked at a giant whiteboard, trying with all his might to solve a basic integral equation-- e to the x, no limits. The answer didn’t come to him and, frustrated, he wrote more and more, half-filling the board with his attempts. Except that one of his mistakes sparked an idea, and, developing it further, he was well on his way to finding the unified theory to everything.   
  
Only then, when he was this close to teasing out the last bits of the equation out of his mind, Sheppard strolled into the lab and, without any warning, pushed Rodney against the board, kissing and pressing against him insistently. The equation was erased as Rodney rubbed against the board, but he didn’t care; making out with Sheppard was much better.  
  
Part of him worried, though. That wasn’t _right_.  
  
Sheppard’s leg was between his and their shirts were coming off when Rodney woke up, sweaty and with a hard-on. And, oh, Sheppard was in the bed with him, but, having just seen him in his dreams, it felt normal to be with him; why _wouldn’t_ he be there, spooned against his back and with one leg over Rodney’s.  
  
Then again, Rodney wasn’t at his sharpest in the morning.  
  
“Sleep well?” Sheppard asked, his hand sneaking beneath Rodney’s fatigue shirt and vest, scratching lightly at his stomach. Rodney tingled all over, from his toes to the top of his spine. He never got touched like this. It was nice. It’d be nicer if it happened more often.  
  
“Mmmm,” Rodney replied. Words were challenging in the morning.  
  
Sheppard kissed him, slowly, along the top of his back, his shoulder blades. Rodney saw the-- _offness_ in Sheppard’s eyes and remembered.  
  
“Oh, god, what are we _doing_!” Rodney scrambled out of the bed, grabbing the covers to hide himself, and tripped over them, ending up on the floor. His ass hurt where he’d fallen and, belatedly, he realized he was _dressed_ ; he didn’t need to cover himself.   
  
Sheppard, on the other hand, _was_ naked. And coverless.  
  
Rodney quickly averted his gaze, angry and confused. How did this happen? _Why_ was it happening? He shouldn’t be having a thing for or with Sheppard.  
  
“We were waking up,” Sheppard said, and Rodney heard creaking noises like he was getting out of the bed. He blanched.  
  
“No, you stay there! No coming here! And _I_ was the one waking up-- you, _you_ were-- weren’t you sleeping on the floor? Didn’t I tell you to stay out of my bed?!”  
  
“You were having a nightmare,” Sheppard explained. “And after that, you wanted company. Of a more intimate sort. I could tell.”  
  
Rodney hid his face with his hands. Stupid wet dreams. “Doesn’t matter. Don’t _ever_ do it again.”  
  
He was liberally handing out the orders now, he knew, but it was for Sheppard’s own good. As well as for his own. He was no good at resisting his urges and wants, especially not if they were being thrown right into his lap.   
  
Better to order Sheppard away and keep anything from happening. Because if anything _did_ , he had no idea how he’d ever explain to Sheppard why he took advantage of him. God. That’d be one awful, awful conversation. “In fact, the further away you stay away from me, the better.” He couldn’t look at the naked Sheppard so Rodney had no idea how he received it, but hopefully, that’d put an end to the worst of the danger.  
  


*

  
  
Sheppard walked a meter away from Rodney. “Further,” he hissed. He inched a tiny bit further. “More! C’mon, at least three times that! It’s not that hard!”  
  
Once there were at least a solid three meters between them, Rodney headed off for the control room, head bent down as he marched furiously. Where had this… _thing_ with Sheppard come from? It’s not as if he’d ever fantasized about him before. At least, not beyond the once or twice or more during a quick jerk-off. And who _didn’t_ wonder what it’d be like with the Oh-So-Great Sheppard, who could seduce hot alien girls left and right?   
  
Though, yeah, it didn’t help that Rodney could also be oblivious to feelings, especially his own. In fact, it’d taken him years to differentiate between “cranky” and “angry.” And he wasn’t sure, yet, if he could tell “want” apart from “need.”  
  
But it wasn’t as if these feeling things were a priority, not when he could be figuring out theoretical physics or making Atlantis run more efficiently or figuring out how to create ZPMs. So, okay, maybe there’d been some attraction on Rodney’s part that he’d ignored and maybe even bottled up, but great good it did to know about it now; it wasn’t as if he could act on it, not with Sheppard the way that he was. He couldn’t anything about it.  
  
Teyla appeared out of nowhere, and Rodney stumbled mid-track to keep from crashing into her. She looked worried. Really, really worried.   
  
“Rodney, have you--“  
  
“I’m not going to do anything!” Rodney blurted out.   
  
“Um, I see,” she said bewildered, and it struck him that she probably hadn’t been asking whether or not he’d take advantage of Sheppard. Not like it was a question you’d normally ask-- oh, hi, how are you, lovely weather, any inappropriate thoughts lately?  
  
Teyla peered over Rodney’s shoulders. “Good morning, John.”  
  
“Morning, Teyla,” he replied, cool and normal and not at all like he’d been commanded to walk three meters behind Rodney.  
  
“How are you?” she asked, and Rodney’s heart rate sped up. Sheppard wouldn’t tell her about the sexual advances, would he?   
  
“Doing good. You?” he said, slipping his hands into his pockets. Oh, thank goodness, he knew better than to talk about it.  
  
Teyla turned her attention back to Rodney. “Did you tell him to act normal?”  
  
“Yeah! How did you know?” Rodney asked.  
  
“He talks and acts like himself, but he is following you at a distance, as if fearing to approach you. That is not at all natural. I take it that he has not shown any signs of improvement?”  
  
Rodney let out a big breath of air, relieved that he might be able to at least talk around his latest problem. “None! I think he’s only gotten _worse_. Teyla, I don’t know what to do with him.”  
  
Okay, maybe Rodney was terrible at knowing what others were thinking, but he was pretty sure that Teyla got sadder. “Nor have Ronon and I found any more information on the device. It is difficult to find an item in the database when you do not even know its name.”  
  
“Yeah, that’s always a joy ride.” Rodney started to walk again, Teyla accompanying him by his side and Sheppard trailing behind them.   
  
He noticed that Teyla was glancing discreetly to either side of them, so he followed her gaze and, oh, maybe she was looking at all the people looking at _them_ as Sheppard tagged behind them like a five-year old.  
  
Telling Sheppard to keep that distance might not have been the best decision. But what else could he do?   
  
“Did you try looking up the room itself, to see if there’s any record of what’s in there?”  
  
“It was the first thing we did,” she said. “But the database lists it as a storage room for a certain metal alloy used to build and repair walls in the city. The files claim that by the time the Ancients evacuated to Earth, the room was empty.”  
  
“Well, someone had to have put it there,” Rodney said. “Machines don’t just up and start walking about… though they might, here. It’d be pretty useful if they did, then you wouldn’t have to worry about transporting them, since they’d go by themselves.”  
  
Speaking of machine-like things that walked on their own, Rodney glanced behind to see how Sheppard was doing.   
  
“You have a point,” Teyla conceded. “But my own theory is that someone put the machine down there at some point and, because they were facing greater concerns such as the war against the Wraith, they failed to record the transfer in the database.”  
  
“That’s pretty sloppy,” Rodney mused. “And they were usually such perfectionists, too. Anal-retentive, really.”   
  
“Yes, it is unusual,” Teyla agreed, sighing. “There may be another explanation for that; I will continue searching the files.”   
  
“Good, good.”  
  
“And what about you, Rodney?”  
  
“Uh?” She looked at him with gentleness. “What about me what?”   
  
“What have you been up to?”  
  
“Uhhhh, well, I’ve been keeping track of Atlantis, and actually, it seems like she’s back to normal, or at least it seemed so last night, and no one’s contacted me since with any complaints--“  
  
“That too is strange,” Teyla said, and Rodney deflated.  
  
“’Strange’ doesn’t begin to describe it! I think all those problems are hiding and just waiting to pop out at the worst possible moment and bring our downfall!”  
  
“Perhaps we do not need to think of the worst case scenarios quite yet,” Teyla suggested, smiling. “Do we not usually save the day at the last moment?”  
  
“Be nice if we could save it _before_ the last moment,” Rodney said. They’d reached the staircase leading up to the control room. “Ah, here’s my stop. I’m going to see if I can’t do the stopping-a-crisis before it starts.”  
  
“I wish you the best of luck, Rodney. We are all counting on you.” Rodney was going to thank her for the added pressure, but she turned to Sheppard, approaching him without getting too close. “John. I know you are reluctant, at this moment, to separate yourself from Rodney, but perhaps you would like to go with me; we could train, and afterwards, we could meditate.”  
  
What? Why would Teyla want to meditate and train at a time like this?   
  
“Nah, think I’ll pass this time. Thanks, though,” Sheppard said.  
  
“Not even just for the meditation?” Teyla sounded hopeful. She couldn’t be that desperate for company. Or did she think that the meditation could be a non-official “cure” for the brainwashing?  
  
“I say you go with her!” Rodney said spontaneously, but Sheppard gave that grin he used before doing something reckless and life-threatening.  
  
“I won’t leave you, McKay.”  
  
“Oh.” There wasn’t really any way to argue with that; Rodney hadn’t forgotten Sheppard’s threat the last time someone tried to take him away. He didn’t want to find out what that threat consisted of. “Um. Okay.”   
  
“It _is_ serious,” Teyla lamented.   
  
“Yeah,” Rodney said. “It really is.”  
  


*

  
  
The control room was just as he’d left it the previous night: quiet with only a few people milling about, some with steaming mugs of coffee (Rodney would one day figure out how to ban it from computer proximity without giving up his own right to eat and drink next to all the electronics).   
  
He spotted Zelenka in a corner, working at a terminal. “Have you found out why nothing’s wrong with Atlantis?” Rodney asked, zooming in on him.  
  
“Good morning to you too,” Zelenka said. He did one of those crazy hand motions, which meant he wanted to get some point or other across.   
  
“What? Oh, right, good morning, whatever, we’ve got more serious matters at hand than greetings, like a perfectly obedient city--“  
  
Except that Zelenka was pointedly staring behind him, and even Rodney knew that it had to be a sign he wasn’t paying attention, and he didn’t speak to audiences if he knew they weren’t even listening. “What is it _now_ \-- oh.”  
  
Sheppard, keeping the ordered distance between them, stood in the middle of the room, hands clasped behind his back like an obedient soldier as he gazed about nonchalantly. In his rush to get back to work, Rodney had forgotten about his follower.  
  
“Yeah, right, _him_ ,” Rodney said, the energy he’d gotten at the prospect of working draining away.   
  
“Is it true? The rumors?” Zelenka asked, awed or horrified. Rodney couldn’t tell which.  
  
“Rumors?” About the slavery? Or worse? Could people _notice_ things like the after-effects of unexpected and unwelcome sexual advances? “There are rumors? What rumors? I haven’t done anything, they’re filthy lies--“  
  
Zelenka looked at him with exasperation (now _there_ was a familiar expression). “I have not heard any rumors about what _you_ have done, but now I wonder what they are!”  
  
“Oh.” Rodney bit his lip. Him and his being mouth. “So, uh, which rumors _did_ you mean?”  
  
“Just speculation about why Sheppard was removed from duty.”  
  
Rodney’s head started to hurt. “I bet they’ve come up with some creative ideas.”  
  
“Of course. But the more reliable rumors, they said that it was for personal reasons, which makes sense, but…” Zelenka looked behind him again. “It is strange, no, that he follows you?”  
  
The headache was becoming a migraine. “Well, yes, it’s true that it’s personal, and that’s how it should stay!”  
  
“Okay, okay.” Zelenka held his hands up in a way too-late request for truce. “I should’ve known better than to ask when you have that ‘I am going to be a pain’ look.”  
  
“Do I?” Rodney touched his face, rubbing at his cheeks. “What does it look like, exactly? Maybe if I grin like this-- how about now, do I still--“  
  
But he didn’t think he looked any less like a pain, not from the way Zelenka’s glare had deepened. “Do you have any questions about _work_? Or can I go back to my research?”  
  
“Question? Yes, of course, question! Is Atlantis still running smoothly?”  
  
“Like a dream.”  
  
“Damn!”   
  
“Is it not good? I know you thrive on the adrenaline of problems, but some of us like smooth sailing.”  
  
“I like smooth sailing too! Well, not the sailing, because I get sea sick, but the point is, if it looks fine, that means we’ve got to diagnose the disease without the symptoms.”  
  
“You mixed your metaphors,” Zelenka pointed out.  
  
“Yes, clearly, it’s vital we correct my figurative language. What are you working on now? No, wait, it doesn’t matter, there’s no way it’s more important than this.”  
  
Zelenka made some noises of indignation, but Rodney could care less about bruised egos. “Forget whatever it was you were doing and look into when all the unusual behavior Atlantis displayed yesterday-- the lights, the locks, and the anti-gravity-- stopped. See if you can figure out why.”  
  
“You are not actually my boss, you know,” he complained, but it was ineffective as far as complaints went since he followed the directions.   
  
Rodney glanced over his shoulder; Sheppard wasn’t in the middle of the room anymore, and a good thing too, since that hadn’t been at all normal and natural. Instead, he was leaning against one of the glass walls, his arms crossed. He wasn’t looking anywhere in particular, but Rodney had the sinking sensation that the minute he turned around, Sheppard would turn his gaze back to him.   
  
Even so, Rodney still picked a seat that faced the opposite direction. Sheppard staring at him was creepy, sure, but it’d be worse to have to stare back. Looking was dangerous; it’d make him think about things like possible alternate endings to that scene in the shower and-- well, in short, he’d be thinking of things that should not be thought of. The less looking, the less thinking, and that was much safer. Inciting temptation wasn’t a good idea.  
  
He curled over the computer screen, poking through an overview of Atlantis’ operating systems. As the on-duty overseer had told him last night (or was it early morning?), the city’s programs insisted everything was in order.   
  
A superficial reading wouldn’t be enough, then; Rodney prodded further into the code, building custom programs to root out recent and unwanted changes. It found nothing and the deeper Rodney penetrated into his research, the more at ease he felt. All he thought about was harmless, (emotionally) uncomplicated code. There was no guilt here.  
  
Since the programs had revealed nothing, Rodney started to read actual code, going through random sections; again, nothing out of the ordinary. In fact, Atlantis was in such good shape he could’ve gone and taken the whole day off without a single worry about any hiccups in the making.  
  
“Breakfast?”  
  
Rodney yelped, but it was just Sheppard, holding a out a bowl of cereal. “You _have_ to stop scaring the hell out of me.”  
  
“Sure thing,” he nodded.  
  
“That wasn’t an order--” Rodney thought twice about that. “You know what, yeah, sure, you’re forbidden from sneaking up on me anymore.” It was a fair enough request, and he couldn’t see why not letting Sheppard scare him anymore could be bad. Maybe it was good, actually; then he couldn’t sneak up on Rodney in showers or in beds.  
  
“Heard you the first time, McKay,” he said with an achingly familiar trace of annoyance. Fake annoyance, of course, but. It still made Rodney long for the real Sheppard. “Aren’t you going to eat? You shouldn’t go all day without food.”  
  
The cereal did look tempting. And, now that he wasn’t so deeply emerged in coding, he realized that he was starving. How could Rodney say no to food that was there for the taking when he was this hungry? He grabbed the bowl and the proffered spoon, and dug in. He’d gone through a third of it before it occurred to him to ask: “Hey, where did you get this? I don’t think there’re any cereal boxes in the control room…”  
  
“The cafeteria tends to have some in the mornings,” Sheppard winked. “Asked one of the guys here to go pick us up some. Thought you might be hungry.”  
  
“Yup, I was.” Okay, for this kind of thing, maybe having Sheppard working to fulfill his every wish and whim wasn’t so bad, and he did not just think that. With some regret, he put the half-eaten bowl on the table. “But don’t do that again.”  
  
“You never let me do anything.” Sheppard sounded annoyed.  
  
“Yes, yes. Hey. I know what you can do. Go back to giving me some distance.”  
  
Sheppard shot him a look of annoyance, but at least he did as told.   
  
Well, since his train of thought had been broken, he might as well play catch up. “Zelenka, you find anything yet?”  
  
“Hmmm, not really.” Zelenka sat up straighter, away from the computer terminal. “The things you mentioned all ceased yesterday simultaneously. It’s hard to say why, but Atlantis itself sent the commands that started the activities and the ones that stopped them.”  
  
“Okay, great.” Rodney rubbed his hands together. “But _why_?”  
  
Zelenka shrugged. “Who knows? We don’t understand what Atlantis does half the time. Maybe she really is sentient, as they say.”   
  
“Oh, come on, the only people saying that are the soldiers, to scare each other,” Rodney said, disgusted. “If you believe that, you might as well believe the other things they say, like how the city is haunted and the Wraith can read our minds. You should know better than to believe any of that! Just because we talk about Atlantis like she’s a person doesn’t mean she really is! Where would her brain be, for starters?”  
  
Zelenka shrugged. “In the code? All I’m saying is, she’s not easy as easy to predict as a computer program. You try making sense out of what she does.”  
  
“Hmph.” Since Zelenka was obviously not going to be much help, Rodney looked at his screen, but the reports there only confirmed what he’d said. Wasn’t there more to this? His gut said there was, but that was just instinct; the actual evidence supported the blue-skies, smooth-sailing and get-over-it theories. “That’s it, then, I guess.”  
  
“Yes, it is. And unless you come up with more paranoid, crazy theories, I am going back to my project. Do _not_ bother me with any more paranoia.”  
  
Going back to a project; Rodney liked the sound of that. And why not? If there were no immediate problems to fix, why not go back to working on, on-- whatever it was he’d been working on before Atlantis had started to act up.   
  
Rodney usually had several pet projects running simultaneously, and he could never quite keep track of them all. What had he been working on, before the device and the Sheppard that made his skin tingle with a single look? Was it something to fight off the Replicators? Or maybe the Wraith?   
  
No, wait, it’d been something to counter the Replicators, the Wraith, and whatever else might make Atlantis its target: a way to amp up the shield _and_ save more energy doing so. That was good. Interesting and good.   
  
Though maybe there was something he could do to get Sheppard back to normal. Getting him back into command was surely a security priority, more so than building a better shield. And it was the right thing to do, for a friend.  
  
The thing was-- even now, without looking at him, Rodney could imagine Sheppard perfectly, leaning against a glass wall or at a terminal, gazing intently, just waiting to jump into action. And Rodney could imagine much, much more. Too much more. Way too much more involving less clothes and that warmth from last night--  
  
If he worked on Sheppard, Rodney would think about him non-stop.   
  
It might drive him crazy. Or, at least, to stupidity.  
  
The shield was important too, Rodney rationalized. There might not be an attack right now, but it wasn’t as if they could predict those, since there was no weather-report equivalent for invasion attempts by assorted alien life forms. Really, with their luck, there’d be one sometime in the next five minutes, and what good would it be to solve Sheppard’s slavery mindset if they all died right afterwards?   
  
Back to the shield it was.  
  
Rodney had a theory, which was that Atlantis’ shield wasn’t all that good. Oh, of course the under-water submerging (and no, he would not think about how the colors of the water had rippled on Sheppard’s awed face the first day they arrived) and the space-traveling were impressive. When he someday magically had the time, Rodney would have to figure out how to integrate that technology onto Earth objects, but fact was, it didn’t do as good a job as it could.   
  
For one thing, the shield was a greedy energy-sucker and while they could all sit around sucking on their thumbs hoping to happen upon a treasure trove of ZPMs-- or better yet, a manual to building ZPMs-- they’d more likely spend the next few years desperately rationing out the little energy they did have. So they needed as efficient a shield as possible.  
  
And like hell Rodney wanted to repeat that frantic reworking of Atlantis’ energy flow, like they had to do when the city changed planets.  
  
The main problem was that Atlantis had too high a level of dependency on its human habitants. It’d run freely for years, but after the mission got here, the others-- and Rodney too, if he was going to be honest, but it’d only be a little, and he recognized now the errors of his ways!-- had reprogrammed Atlantis too much. Now it needed to be told when, where, and how to distribute its energy. And while the ability to manually override all of Atlantis’ decisions sounded like a fine idea in principle, it ended up being a Herculean task since no one really understood how the city worked. How do you control something if you don’t know what it does, or how it does it?   
  
Better to let Atlantis do most of its decision-making with minimum interference.  
  
Rodney set to work, changing code here, adding this line there, integrating some of the ideas he’d gotten from reading through the Replicators’ programs, and restoring some of the older settings, from before their arrival.  
  
“McKay?”  
  
He nearly had a heart attack from hearing his name so suddenly. “Jesus Christ, Sheppard, didn’t I tell you to stop sneaking up on me--” Rodney ranted, but then he saw who it actually was. “Sam! Uh, I mean, Colonel Carter!”  
  
“Yes, that would be me.”  
  
Rodney felt his face heat up. “Sorry-- I didn’t mean to yell at you, I just got surprised, and Sheppard, he just keeps scaring the heck out of me--“  
  
“Really? Is it because of the brainwashing?” Sam seemed interested, and Rodney was glad to oblige her curiosity.  
  
“Oh, no, it’s unrelated, I don’t have any secret desire to have the living daylights scared out of me-- or maybe I do. Sheppard keeps trying to fulfill these desires I didn’t--” Rodney stopped himself before any more drivel came out. “That is. I don’t get what he does half the time, heh, and so, um, why are you here?”  
  
Smooth, McKay. Really smooth.   
  
“Oh, I like to come here when I can, to get a feel for how things are going.” Her eyes flickered to look behind him, and he knew at once at whom she was frowning. “Has he gotten any better?”  
  
“Well,” Rodney squeezed his left his hand in his right one, then squeezed his right with his left, “No, not per se, but he’s not worse, at least, and that’s kind of like being better, isn’t it? And either way, I’m taking good care of him-- not that I _should_ be taking care of him, like a pet, but, y’know, since he can’t take care of himself, it’s up to me--“  
  
“In other words, not at all.”  
  
“No. Not so much, no.” There was a pause and Rodney added, miserably, “But I’m trying?”  
  
“I know.”  
  
Good old Sam; she probably did.  
  
She crossed her arms, which, of course, emphasized her bust and Rodney realized that he’d been talking to her for whole minutes and it hadn’t once struck him to admire her. He’d just kind of forgotten what a knock-out she was; instead, he thought, with some self-disgust, he’d been thinking about _Sheppard_.  
  
He purposefully focused on her, like it was heterosexual therapy or something.   
  
“Sorry to hear it,” she said.  
  
“I’m sorry to say it,” Rodney offered. “Really, _really_ sorry.”  
  
“So,” Sam said, with a noticeable rise in her pitch. He suspected that she was trying to change the subject, a move he greeted with wide open arms. “What are you working on? Fixing Sheppard? Or something new?”  
  
Rodney winced at the reminder that maybe he should’ve been working on Sheppard. “Uh, something new, actually. You know how the shield is basically one big soul-sucking energy drain,” and he explained the specifics, not even having to dumb down anything since he knew she’d catch it all. She might even be able to come up with a helpful hint or two, but he doubted it.  
  
If Sheppard-- the real, not-slave Sheppard-- were here, Rodney thought wistfully, he’d probably have some unhelpful hints of his own. No, no, not Sheppard, he reminded himself; stop thinking about him. Focus on Sam. Sam was a much better fixation.  
  
“So by increasing the receptivity of Atlantis’ sensor monitors and giving the city a more detailed set of instructions on how to react, it’ll judge better for itself how to handle more specific situations, thus bypassing the middle-men, allowing for a more efficient energy allocation process?” Sam summarized.  
  
“Yes!” Rodney wagged his index finger. “That’s it exactly. I’ve got it almost ready to go, I’ve just go to tweak a few more lines here and there, maybe run it by Zelenka, since he always gives me a hard time when I make major changes without consulting anyone--”   
  
“McKay,” Sam interrupted. He realized that she wasn’t smiling. In fact, her mouth was unsmiling, if that was possible. Why? Was it because he’d basically admitted that he often ran off and made important modifications on his own? How irresponsible she must think he was, irresponsible like with Sheppard and why couldn’t he stop thinking about him?! Focus on Sam! “This sounds great, but I can’t let you implement it quite yet.”  
  
“Not now-now, like I said, there’s still some tweaking to be done, and, heh, don’t think I’d throw in revolutionary code before I actually finishing writing it.“  
  
“I wish that were it, McKay, but there’s more. The fact is, the IOA has requested that we have them examine any significant changes in code before we try running it.”  
  
“What!” Rodney threw his hands up. “Like anyone there would understand this! Most of them can’t even read Ancient! They did, they wouldn’t know how to write the html for a page about their pet dogs!”  
  
“Funny,” Sam said, but she didn’t sound at all amused, “That’s the same thing I said to them-- not in those words, but. They insisted, though. And what harm will it do? We’ll send them the new code, they’ll pretend to understand it, they’ll give us the green light, and we’ll be on our on way. At worst, it’ll take a bit longer to get the changes in, and in return, they’ll think they have control here and will be less strict with us.”  
  
“But what if there’s an emergency? We can’t wait for their permission! You’ve never been here for a real crisis, so you wouldn’t know, but sometimes we’ve had to uproot entire systems in minutes just to keep from becoming Wraith dinner.”  
  
“In that case,” Sam took a deep breath, “We’ll deal with it as it comes. But for now, it’s a symbolic gesture that’ll make them happy. And the happier they are, the better for us. We’ll probably be able to get more grants, for example.”  
  
Grants? Oh, right, money, that unpleasant side of getting to do what he wanted as a scientist. “Sometimes,” Rodney said wistfully, “I miss that time when we were cut off from Earth and had only ourselves to worry about. But not really, since now we can smuggle in Oreos on a regular basis, but still.”  
  
“It’ll be okay, McKay. By sacrificing a little, we can get more.”  
  
How would Sheppard feel about these changes if he had the presence of mind to even care? He probably would not appreciate the added layer of red tape; he seemed to have some kind of vendetta against authority figures.   
  
But wondering about that was pointless, given how, right now, Sheppard seemed to want only _more_ authority (and, oh god, what was Rodney going to do about that?). Sheppard’s opinion was out of the question and Rodney himself didn’t care enough about administrative confusion to put up a fight, as long as he got to keep doing what he did, in one way or another. So he stretched his lips, trying for a smile, which he was sure didn’t work, and said, “I guess.”  
  
He still couldn’t resist looking back at Sheppard guiltily, like he’d done something wrong. Sheppard, for his part, just grinned back and gave a small wave.  
  
Flustered, Rodney turned back to his coding. And worked at it for as long as he could.

*

Rodney all but crawled back into his room.  
  
“That’s what you get for overdoing it,” Sheppard reproached.   
  
Hand fumbling, Rodney unzipped his jacket and shrugged off one sleeve before realizing that he was exposing skin to Sheppard. He almost put the jacket back on, but then stripped it off anyway; _he_ was the horny one, not Sheppard. “Gotta overdo it,” he muttered. “Keeps me busy. When I work, I think about work. And not about you.” Oh, god, he’d just said that out loud, hadn’t he.   
  
“Awww, that’s sweet,” John grinned.  
  
“You didn’t hear that,” Rodney told him firmly.  
  
“Okay.”  
  
Rodney sank into his bed, face-first into the pillow. “Mmmm.” His muscles ached all over, probably from how tense he’d been ever since Sheppard’s change, and he had a low-level headache throbbing around the base of his skull. His tailbone complained loudest of all, still hurting from yesterday’s fall.  
  
And ill ease ate at Rodney for not protesting against the IOA’s increased control over Atlantis’ code. Rodney knew that Sheppard would hate it; Rodney should’ve spoken against it in his place. Rodney should’ve said no, never, don’t--  
  
“Y’know,” Sheppard started.  
  
“Not now. Going to sleep,” he said, words muffled by the pillow.   
  
“Don’t know if you’ll be able to sleep like that. You didn’t take off your shoes.”  
  
“Can sleep with my shoes.” If he could be bothered, he’d take them off.   
  
“Sure,” Sheppard said, and the next thing Rodney knew, his shoes were being slipped off. “But not well.” They came off before he could protest. “There, doesn’t that feel better?”  
  
He wiggled his toes, some of the tension melting away. He almost sighed. “No.”  
  
“You’re a crappy liar, McKay.” And then Sheppard dug his thumbs into the sole of his left foot, and Rodney felt better still. Better, but with the nagging sensation that this could not end well.   
  
“Thought I told you not to touch me,” Rodney mumbled, light-headed from both the exhaustion and Sheppard’s ministrations.   
  
“You could use a massage.” Sheppard’s hand rubbed against his foot’s arch and it was all he could do to keep from moaning out loud; if he didn’t, it was only because he bit into the pillow. “Don’t know how you manage, being this tense all the time.”  
  
Now both of his feet were uncovered as Sheppard rubbed and squeezed them, slow and deliberate and it was just an innocent and safe massage; so what if he let himself enjoy it, surely it wouldn’t do any harm.   
  
Sheppard hit a particularly sensitive spot. “Yeah, there--” He pressed against it harder and this time Rodney really did moan.  
  
Suddenly Sheppard’s hands were gone. Rodney wished, a lot, that the massage hadn’t ended, but it was probably for the best.   
  
Except that he felt those hands again, now on his back. Rodney tensed. “Hey--“  
  
“Jesus, McKay, it’s just a massage; relax already. Did the world end after the foot rub?”  
  
True. There had been no world-ending.   
  
Sheppard worked his shoulders, pressing down with the base of his hands and moving in wide circles. Rodney shivered. This was starting to feel good in an entirely not-innocent way. Anxious, Rodney started to babble. “Hey, don’t know if you heard, but I was talking to Sa-- Colonel Carter -- and she told me the craziest thing, about the IOA, they want, ohhhhh--“  
  
This last word trailed off into a groan as Sheppard reached the small of his back. Rodney had to take several deep breaths. “So the IOA, they’re going to be more anal retentive than ever, it’s going to be the biggest pain--“  
  
Despite all the steadying, deep breaths he took, Rodney wanted more. And more, and more. Sheppard obliged, massaging harder; Rodney curved his back into that touch. “You’re gonna hate it so much, Sheppard, when you get back to yourself, I should’ve said something, I should’ve tried to stop it--“  
  
“Shhhhh,” Sheppard murmured. “Don’t worry about it.”  
  
“But I--” Again Rodney was cut in-mid phrase, this time because Sheppard’s hands had traveled back up to his shoulders and, the way he pressed in, Rodney almost couldn’t breathe.  
  
Sheppard stroked the upper-most part of his spine and Rodney squirmed, the feeling from that one touch radiating out to the rest of his body. He stroked it again and Rodney groaned, the warmth growing stronger, especially in his gut. “Again--” The warmth became even stronger, jolting from neck to stomach to groin. “Fuck--“  
  
If Rodney had any thought left to stop the massage before it got out of hand, it was gone when Sheppard _squeezed_ the back of his neck. Rodney gasped, his body convulsing once, entirely caught by the sensation. “Oh--“  
  
After that, things got a bit hazy.   
  
Did he turn over then, or did Sheppard roll him? Did Rodney pull him down, or was it Sheppard that went to kiss him, already knowing it was what Rodney wanted? Either way it ended up with Sheppard straddling his hips, bent over as he opened his mouth against Rodney’s, his tongue slow yet urgent.   
  
Rodney raised his hands tentatively, and Sheppard took hold of them, placing Rodney’s palms over his own chest. Yes. Rodney ran them under Sheppard’s shirt, tracing the lines of his ribcage. He longed to see it all, and then Sheppard was ripping his shirt off and throwing it on to the floor. Rodney stared, open-mouthed, at Sheppard’s torso, then back up at Sheppard’s cocky grin. God, Rodney wanted that-- _all_ of that.  
  
Sheppard got out of bed to strip off the rest of his clothes, and Rodney sighed to see that he too was getting hard. But he stayed in bed, frozen, and Sheppard had to take both his hands to get him out of the bed. Once on his feet, Rodney, tongue-tied, cooperated as Sheppard gently pulled his shirt off over his head and removed his pants, underwear, socks. Eventually the two of them stood in front of each other naked and hard and short of breath.   
  
Rodney was too scared to move, but Sheppard smiled. “McKay,” he said, warm and encouraging. Rodney whimpered. “McKay,” Sheppard repeated, then whispered: “Rodney.”  
  
Rodney threw himself forward and kissed John with everything he had, holding either side of his face. They stumbled onto the bed, John falling down to his back, and Rodney pinned him there, stunned by the adoration on John’s face. It was so sweet. “C’mon, Rodney,” John begged, arching upwards, and Rodney, kissing and moaning, pressed him down.   
  


*

  
  
He woke up with the sun streaming over his face. “Hmmm,” Rodney groaned and rolled over, eyes still shut. He felt grimy. Gross. He shuddered, rubbing at his arms and bare chest; he was covered all over in dried sweat. Why?   
  
And there was the strongest smell-- partly his own sweat, but there was more. Another was a strong musk, like a bed after sex and before changing the covers.   
  
And he could smell someone else.  
  
The sun still overbearing on his face, Rodney pried open his eyes.   
  
Next to him was a sleeping, naked Sheppard.   
  
Oh god.  
  
He stilled, not daring to move. He wanted the whole world-- no, all of time to stop. He wanted to go back and keep any of this from having happened.  
  
But this was one wish that not even an enslaved Sheppard could grant, and both the world and time went on.  
  
Sheppard, as if working in tandem with Rodney’s consciousness, started to blink himself awake. Rodney’s heart went into overdrive; he couldn’t face him. Not now. Maybe not ever. Oh, god.  
  
Yet he could not turn away and, both sickened and aroused, he watched as Sheppard pulled his arms above his head, his muscles stretching. Last night had been the worst mistake of his life and what was wrong with him, wanting it to happen again. As if the once wasn’t going to ruin enough.  
  
“Hey,” Sheppard said, sitting up without any self-consciousness. “You’re worried--“  
  
Rodney wanted to laugh and cry, this was all so out of hand. He let out something in between. “Worried-- I wish I was worried! This is _past_ \-- oh, god, what do I tell you when you’re back to normal? I’m sorry, Sheppard, I’m sorry--“  
  
“Shhhh,” he soothed, and Rodney’s heart almost stopped, because the sunlight was hitting Sheppard just so, highlighting his sharp facial features, and he was flooded with shame. Sheppard leaned over, reaching for Rodney’s head, as if to hold him close. “That doesn’t matter--“  
  
But Rodney recoiled, getting as far away as he could within the bed. “No. Don’t. Don’t _ever_ \--“  
  
Sheppard too recoiled at this, something like sadness and regret on his face, and Rodney felt guilty over that too, but this was the right thing to do. He should’ve been strict from the very beginning, oh god, instead of trying to appease this brainwashed Sheppard.   
  
“Don’t ever touch me again.” Rodney spoke as sternly as he could, but his voice still shook. “Turn around, and don’t follow me.”  
  
The order must’ve stuck, for Sheppard did not follow Rodney into the bathroom.  
  
Rodney stayed in the shower for as long as he could bear, his fingers wrinkling and his skin reddening from the scalding hot water.  
  


*

  
  
Fully dressed, Rodney had to grip his head between his hands for a minute before he had the courage to go back into his room. Sheppard awaited him, leaning back into the couch, and sat up when Rodney returned. He was also dressed, in a plain black shirt and pants. He must’ve sensed that Rodney wanted that.  
  
“You’re staying here,” he told Sheppard.  
  
“No.” Sheppard stood up, hands on his hips.   
  
“I’m not fighting with you over this,” Rodney said, tired. “Just do it.”  
  
But Sheppard aimed a sharp, hard gaze at him. “You don’t want me anywhere near. I get it. But I can’t do that-- look, you won’t even know I’m there.” Rodney doubted that; he’d never not be aware of Sheppard’s presence again. “I’m going with you, no matter what.”   
  
Sheppard following him around still? Rodney didn’t know which was worse, the constant reminder of his guilt or the fear of being colossally stupid and giving in again. “I can’t--“  
  
He held his hands up in truce. “Look, you won’t see or hear me. Promise.”  
  
That didn’t sound appetizing either; he’d be wondering the whole time where, exactly, Sheppard was. But if Sheppard wasn’t going to give in, then this was about the best compromise they’d get.   
  
Unable-- or unwilling-- to speak, Rodney just nodded once.  
  
And, true to his word, as he walked to his lab, Rodney wouldn’t have known Sheppard was anywhere near. Every time he turned back for glances he took without meaning to, there was no trace of Sheppard.   
  
But even if Rodney couldn’t see or hear him, Sheppard was still within him, like a stain seeped into wood. Rodney didn’t have to close his eyes to see Sheppard beneath him, gasping like he wanted it, or something; didn’t need any prompting to remember the heat from Sheppard’s skin, as he grasped his side, hands sliding down to his hip--  
  
Oh god. “Three point one four one five nine two six five,” Rodney started to recite under his breath. It didn’t help. He could still hear Sheppard’s ragged breath, asking for more, and more.  
  
Zelenka was in the lab, working with a computer screen. His hair was tousled in the exact same way it was yesterday, and the day before that, and the month before that. He looked so… pedestrian, it hurt Rodney. “You’re late,” Zelenka commented, looking up.   
  
Rodney nodded mutely, not even able to work up an anger over the accusation, and went to the other side of the room, nestling with a computer tablet. He had no idea what he’d work on, but whatever it was, he’d love to get on with it.  
  
But then Zelenka asked, “Is Sheppard better?”   
  
Rodney covered his face with both his hands. He felt so heavy, like gravity had increased tenfold. “No. He isn’t.”  
  
Zelenka sighed. “I see you’re having another bad day. Forget I said anything.”  
  
Rodney wished he could. Instead, he opened his inbox.  
  
There were the usual junk messages sent to everyone on Atlantis about group events and the proper usage of Ancient technology, and several emails from his underlings updating him on the projects he had them run. But what caught his attention was an encrypted message from the IOA.   
  
“Zelenka, did you get an email from the IOA?” Rodney asked, running through the decrypting.   
  
“Hmm? Ah, yes, I’m working on it now. More weapons.”  
  
Weapons? The decoded message read:

Stargate Central 


 

International Oversight Advisory 


 

Colorado Springs, Colorado. 


  
  


NO. 821-348 


  
  


FOR THE HEADS OF SCIENCE DEPARTMENTS: 


  
  


It has come to our attention, after reviewing reports from the last year, that Atlantis currently holds a great wealth of information on nanite technology. In light of our needs, the IOA is interested in further developing Earth defense and attack systems and advise the Atlantis staff to consider and suggest projects


Rodney didn’t bother to read the rest of the message. “Oh, that’s real smart, harnessing a technology we barely understand and could turn around and eat us in our sleep. Figuratively speaking. Or not so figuratively speaking.”  
  
“Not like we have not already fooled around with nanite technology.”  
  
“Yeah, but, on a smaller level! Not for the entire Earth!”  
  
“Time to get started, I suppose.”  
  
“Jeez,” Rodney rolled his sleeves. “They’re gonna start telling us how to do everything, aren’t they?”  
  
“Are you surprised?” Zelenka asked sharply. “We are an uncultivated force, and they are cultivators. Of course they will want to control us all they can. It was just a matter of time.”  
  
Sam had talked about the sacrifices they should make in order to keep on researching-- but researching what, exactly? Whatever he was told to? He’d come here to play with unexplored possibilities, not because some chicken-brained bureaucrat had, while flipping through the American Idol commercials, seen some idea on the Discovery channel he wanted investigated.   
  
If Sheppard had been here, he’d have fought it from the very beginning. Though maybe this had been going for a long time now, and Sheppard had already been fighting it before getting brainwashed and--. And. And the other things. Rodney clenched his head. He should’ve fought in Sheppard’s place, instead of letting it pass him by.  
  
Maybe “later” wasn’t as good as “sooner,” but it was definitely a step up from “never.” “I’m not doing this,” Rodney declared, deleting the message.   
  
“What, just like that?” Zelenka asked. “That’s bold.”  
  
“You think we should work on that vague, maybe dangerous drivel?”  
  
Zelenka pulled his lower lip over his top one for a second, considering. “Well, I do agree with you that it’s drivel.”  
  
“So there you go!” He almost called out for Sheppard then and there, but then stopped, not wanting to be seen doing so.  
  
So he stepped out into the hallway, where the people passing by were few and weren’t paying him attention. “Sheppard,” he hissed, not wanting to say the name any louder than necessary.   
  
And that was enough; at once he heard Sheppard asking “What?” and walking up from behind him.  
  
Rodney glanced around, at the floor, at the walls, and then settled on Sheppard’s shoes. “I’ve decided-- we’re going to work full time on getting you back to normal. Like I should’ve, from the beginning.” He tried to speak with determination. Sheppard’s black boots didn’t move, light reflecting off it. “And you can’t refuse to cooperate, because I swear, we will-- “  
  
“Nah, it’s cool,” Sheppard said, tapping the toe of one his boots against the floor. “If that’s what you want, then we’ll do it. Let’s figure out how to fix me.”  
  
Rodney gave up his observation of Sheppard’s feet to look straight into his face. No trace of sarcasm. “Oh. I didn’t think it’d be that easy. Doesn’t it go against your programming? Forget it, it’s better this way and I won’t keep asking. You don’t happen to have any suggestions or tips, do you?”   
  
“Dunno. Weren’t Teyla and Ronon reading up information in the databases? You could start with them, see what they’ve come up with.”  
  
“That’s a good idea,” Rodney nodded slowly, then stopped. “Wait a second. Why weren’t you this helpful before?”  
  
“You didn’t ask,” Sheppard explained.  
  
“Oh. Right. But--” his voice trembled. “You could’ve assumed. Like you assumed other things.”   
  
Sheppard shrugged. “You never really thought it, either.”  
  
Rodney stood there, unable to move or speak. Was it that he hadn’t wished specifically for Sheppard’s help on getting him fixed? Or was it that he hadn’t thought enough about saving Sheppard to be offered help on how to do it?  
  
The former wasn’t that bad, but if it was the latter-- what kind of a friend was he?  
  
But Sheppard was looking at him expectantly. Sheppard needed him. Rodney couldn’t panic, as much as he wanted to. Slowly, Rodney raised his hand to his ear, activating his radio. “Teyla? Ronon?” He said the names numbly, going by routine.  
  
“Rodney.” Teyla’s voice flooded in his ear, and he didn’t know if he felt better or worse, just hearing her. “Your timing is perfect; I was about to call you. Ronon and I have uncovered some information. Come meet us at the transporter we used yesterday.”  
  
He didn’t know if he should feel excitement or dread.  
  


*

  
  
Rodney assumed that any information at all had to be good, but from the way Ronon leaned against the wall next to the transporter, arms crossed, scowling, and Teyla’s hard-set expression, maybe he’d thought wrong.  
  
They didn’t seem any happier, either, upon sighting Rodney and Sheppard. The only difference, as far as Rodney could tell, was that Teyla tried to stand taller, pulling her shoulders back, and Ronon looked up at the ceiling instead of the floor.  
  
Rodney swallowed and gave a dejected, “Hey.”  
  
“John, Rodney,” Teyla said.   
  
Ronon glanced at them, twisting the side of his mouth; that was probably a greeting.  
  
“Well, we’re a cheerful group,” Sheppard said, and they all stared at him. “What, too tense for humor?”   
  
“No, we’re too worried, Sheppard. About you.” Teyla gave him a brief, tight smile. Rodney twitched, his skin crawling. He wanted answers, and none were forthcoming. But he tried to reign himself in.  
  
“No need, really,” Sheppard promised, smirking.   
  
Rodney couldn’t wait anymore. “Okay, so what’s the bad news? There’s no cure?” He blurted out. As he said it, he imagined what it’d be like if there really were no cure. That…. thing he did, it’d never have consequences. Sheppard would never care and no one would ever know. It might be better that way.   
  
Rodney felt rotten at once. What kind of wish was _that_? They had to get Sheppard back, because that was like saving his life, and damn it, that’s what they did, save each other. Even if they screwed up a lot in between. Oh god.   
  
Teyla replied mercifully quick. “I was about to ask you the same thing, for I have not seen you this upset since we lost Carson.”  
  
“Really?” Rodney touched his face.   
  
“You look pretty awful,” Ronon confirmed. “Like a Wraith sucked your life away.”  
  
“Yeah, I can see that,” Sheppard said.  
  
Rodney pressed his lips together. “Thanks for the clarification, but, in case you’re forgetting, we’re not here to discuss me or how I feel or what I’ve done, we’re here to talk about Sheppard and how to get him back to normal, so let’s _do_ that already.”  
  
“Of course,” Teyla startled at Rodney’s sudden irritation. “After going through more files, I came across a description of a ‘Behavior Enhancer,’ a device designed to alter people in the same way John has been.”   
  
Rodney put a hand up to his mouth. “So it really was supposed to brainwash people? We didn’t just use it wrong?” He gagged, close to being sick. “But why would the Ancients want something like that?”  
  
“The database did not say, but I can think of a few explanations,” Teyla grimaced. “None of them savory. But whatever their reasons, the historical records show that they tried using it on non-Lanteans for a number of years. At one point, the city held dozens of persons they had experimented on.”  
  
Rodney snuck a glance at Sheppard; he didn’t seem at all affected. “Weird,” was all he said.  
  
“Yes. After that, there are no more mentions in the database of the ‘Behavior Enhancer’ technology, as if it ceased to exist altogether.”  
  
“Probably wanted to hide it,” Ronon said. He wouldn’t stand still, restlessly shifting. “Stick it in the basement and never think of it again.”  
  
Rodney couldn’t help it; he squeezed his wrist, then his arm, then his wrist again, with his hand. He had some things himself he wouldn’t mind sticking in the basement and forgetting.   
  
If he wanted to burry the subject, then why did he keep digging it back up? Wouldn’t it be better if they just left things as they were? Sheppard was fine like this, and, oh god, there he was again, thinking the wrong thing. Rodney squeezed his arm tighter still. It started to hurt.  
  
“So, uh, yeah, that’s all new information, but that’s it?” Rodney asked. “No undo instructions? No reversing machine in the room next door?”   
  
“As much as I wish there were any such explanations, no.” Teyla clasped her hands. “Nor do we know what became of those who underwent the same treatment as John; they are never mentioned again in the records.”  
  
“So it’s all pointless,” the words stumbled out of Rodney’s mouth. “I’m going to keep on having this zombie Sheppard following me around, like I’m some kind of sick slave-master--“  
  
“Rodney!” Teyla exclaimed, but Rodney only stopped spewing out words when she grabbed him by the shoulders. He flinched. Touching, being touched by others, wasn’t right. It shouldn’t happen. “I understand your guilt--“  
  
Rodney laughed weakly. “No, you probably don’t.” Teyla would’ve never-- just, no. She wouldn’t have. She was stronger than that. Not like him.  
  
She held him by the shoulders and looked intently into his eyes. Rodney would’ve glanced away, but you didn’t look away from Teyla. He stared back, frozen. “Perhaps I do not. Indeed, I have never had this much responsibility over another human being. But I have led many, and I have had reason to mourn my poor decisions. I know how challenging it is to lead.”  
  
None of her decisions could’ve been as “poor” as his. But she went on. “Nevertheless, the important thing is to stay strong-- not just for your own sake, but for his as well. It is your duty. How can you take care of him if you are not able to hold yourself up?”  
  
She released him and Rodney stumbled back a couple of steps. He leaned against the wall and took a deep breath, then another. “But what do I do?” He couldn’t make up for the mistake he’d made. It was done; no going back. He wouldn’t ever forget, nor would Sheppard.   
  
“Easy,” Ronon grinned. “Come with us. We’re going back down, see if we can’t figure out more. Better than doing nothing and moping.”  
  
“Back to the crime scene,” Rodney muttered. “Joy.”  
  
“Crime scene?” Teyla asked.   
  
“Nothing,” Rodney said. “Just more dumb Earth slang. Let’s go.”  
  


*

  
  
Their steps echoed as they walked through the basement hallways.   
  
Aside from the gravity, it was as Rodney remembered it: the same indentations in the walls, the same hollowness, the same creepiness. His stomach curled up into a tighter and tighter knot with every step they took towards the room. What would they find? Nothing? Or would they get an answer and succeed in getting Sheppard back to normal? What then?  
  
“I assume he has not changed much,” Teyla suddenly said.  
  
Rodney’s heart stopped for a second; he hadn’t even known she had fallen into step with him. He glanced around quickly; Sheppard was a few meters back with Ronon. They were both surveying the area, heads turning. So they were taking this like they would a mission: constant awareness.   
  
“No, not at all. He’s still… problematic. Clingy. Thinks he knows what’s best for me. It’s pretty bad,” Rodney admitted. Not that he could ever tell her, or anyone else, exactly how bad it’d gotten.  
  
“I thought as much,” Teyla said. “He is still odd, even if he means to act normally. But I am certain we can undo the effects of the brainwashing, and lighten your burden, soon.” She raised her eyebrows, and while Rodney wasn’t fluent in facial language, if he had to guess, he supposed that was supposed to be encouragement. ‘Things will be better,’ as it were.   
  
Rodney scratched the back of his head; Teyla shouldn’t be loading him with his well-wishes. He didn’t deserve it. “Thanks. I guess.” Like a distorted version of Orpheus, Rodney couldn’t resist turning back to check on Sheppard.   
  
“Rodney,” Teyla said. “This is the room; you do not need to go further.”  
  
He stopped and looked around. He’d been so distracted with Sheppard that he’d almost walked past the room. “Right! Here we are.” He stared at the door, rooted.  
  
Sheppard was the one to walk forward and make the door slide open. “Don’t worry so much, McKay,” he said, with a slight smirk. Rodney’s heart twisted.   
  
Sheppard went in, as did Teyla and Ronon, and Rodney had no choice but to follow.   
  
The room seemed so simple, now that he looked at it with the lights on, standing on his two feet. In the darkness, bouncing from one side to another and then later on trying to revive Sheppard, the room had seemed like something out of a nightmare, warped and confusing. But no, it had a typically Lantean style, with grooves running parallel to the floor on the walls, bright lights, and a certain sterility.   
  
And, of course, there was the console in the middle of the room. It was almost inviting, with its lack of a definite purpose-- a mystery waiting to be unveiled-- except that he, and all the others, knew too well what it was capable of.   
  
They all stood around the room’s entrance, hesitating.   
  
“What now?” Ronon asked.   
  
“We examine it. Again,” Teyla said.  
  
Rodney suddenly wanted to be anywhere but here. “We’ve done that already, and you know what, this isn’t such a great idea when you think about it; the last time we got it to do anything, look what happened!” He motioned to Sheppard. “This is a bad idea. Really, really bad. Let’s go.”  
  
“We must take some risks, Rodney, but if you like, you can stay behind,” Teyla offered, too kindly, like a teacher talking to the one boy too scared to go into the deep end of the pool.   
  
More than his fear, he couldn’t take Teyla’s kindness. It was wrong and misdisrected. Rodney felt all the guiltier. “I’ll go.”  
  
They all approached the console, even Sheppard, and stood a meter or so away, looking but not ready to touch. “When you two came back here, what did you do?” Rodney asked.  
  
“We touched some of the commands, but as we told you, we were unable to trigger anything,” Teyla said.  
  
“No good without the Ancient gene,” Ronon added.   
  
Now they were at a stand-still; great. He’d put himself through all this for nothing. As confused as he was over what he wanted, Rodney wished they’d at least had _some_ new information to work with.  
  
“I could try,” Sheppard piped up.   
  
“That could--” Rodney started, then thought twice about it. “No, wait. You touching that thing was how this got all so screwed up. You’re not touching anything.”  
  
“Actually,” Teyla tilted her head, considering Sheppard. “It is an interesting idea. I do not suppose you know anything about how the machine works, do you? Any instructions that were imparted with your transformation?”  
  
Sheppard glanced quickly at Rodney before answering. “Nope, not really. It made me realize I had to prioritize some things, that’s all. Didn’t really come with an instruction manual, or anything.”  
  
“You never told me that,” Rodney broke in. “You never said a thing about what happened to you when the brainwashing happened.” Why did he feel so left out, almost betrayed? And by the actions of someone who wasn’t even in their right mind? “You should’ve told me. It’s important information, you should’ve told me.”  
  
“You never asked,” Sheppard pointed out.  
  
That stung. “Oh, so now it’s my fault.”   
  
“That’s not what I said.”  
  
“You might as well have.”  
  
“Fine,” Sheppard raised his hands, “It wasn’t your fault.”  
  
But it was.  
  
“Putting that aside,” Teyla said, startling Rodney; he’d forgotten about her and Ronon. “John, could you explain what you mean by ‘prioritize’?”  
  
“We went over that with Heightmeyer,” Rodney snapped. “I’m the apple of his eye, he lives and breaths for me, yadda yadda yadda. We don’t have to go through it again, once was more than enough.”  
  
Falling in line, Sheppard tightly shut his mouth. When it became apparent that he would not answer, Teyla sighed. “Rodney, even if you do not want to hear him explain once more, neither Ronon nor I were there, so we do not know what Sheppard said. If we hear it from his perspective, it may give us a better idea as to how the conditioning happened, which might enable us to undo it.”  
  
She was right. Again. Damn it. “What are you waiting for?” Rodney asked irritably. “Answer her!”  
  
Sheppard spoke. “I have to protect McKay and do what he wants. I live for him.”  
  
Rodney clamped his hands over his ears halfway through this, but he could still hear him.  
  
He barely made out what Ronon said next. “What if he told you to go back to normal? Give up the reprioritization?”  
  
“Don’t be stupid,” Rodney exclaimed. “There’s no way it could be that easy; if it were, we wouldn’t be here now, since we’d have solved it right after it happened. Half the time he does what I want without even asking.”  
  
“I would like to hear the answer, though,” Teyla said. “John? What do you have to say?”  
  
Sheppard shifted from one foot, then to the other. “Answer,” Rodney mumbled, all moisture gone from his mouth. It couldn’t have been that simple. It couldn’t have been.   
  
“I do what Rodney tells me,” was all Sheppard said.  
  
Ronon and Teyla both looked at Rodney with great excitement. “Do it,” Ronon encouraged.   
  
“It cannot hurt to try,” Teyla nodded.   
  
“It can’t be that easy,” Rodney said faintly. If it were, then it really had been all his fault. It’d have been because he hadn’t wished hard enough for Sheppard’s liberty. He’d have wanted Sheppard under his control. “And I already told him he should act normal.”  
  
“Act,” Teyla pointed out. “Not _be_ normal.”  
  
Oh, god. Maybe it had been that simple all along..  
  
“Try,” Teyla insisted. “We must do everything we can; it would be worse to be wrong and not have tried at all than to risk feeling foolish.”  
  
Teyla was on a streak today; everything she said was right. Unfortunately. It’d be worse to let his mistakes keep compounding because he was too scared to own up to the ones he’d already made.  
  
If he wanted to right things with Sheppard, he had to at least try.  
  
Rodney took a deep, deep breath and stood face to face with Sheppard, summoning all of his courage. “Go back to normal. And don’t just act it. Forget having me as a priority or being the purpose of your life. Go back to how you were, before you triggered that machine.”  
  
Sheppard’s eyes widened, as if he were alarmed, and his chin clamped tightly shut. And that was the last thing Rodney saw before all the lights went out. “What the--” Rodney yelled, and then, oh, god, his feet were no longer touching the ground.   
  
Sheppard’s voice rang out: “What happened?!”


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Yes! I mean--” Rodney blinked rapidly, biting his lips again, now looking at John in earnest, not breaking eye contact. “Just the bad parts, so that we can go back to normal--“
> 
> They were talking about two entirely different things. John knew this. It still pissed him off. “You can’t vanish away the parts that bother you, McKay, like they never happened.”
> 
> McKay went white, then red; he looked away. Good. He got it.

Carter faced the screen displaying a map of Atlantis, her back towards the door.  
  
John wondered how long she had been there, going through maps of each and every floor, trying to find the problem so that it could be fixed. But could you pinpoint problems so easy and say, “there, there’s the spot”?  
  
Just now, Keller had examined several maps of him-- x-rays, CAT scans, MRI readings-- and not once did she “there.” Did that mean there’s nothing wrong with him? He was all fine and dandy and in one piece?  
  
“What’s the status?” John asked, feeling safer the moment the door slid closed behind him. It was a false security. He wasn’t protected by the fact that there was little space between him and a hard surface, but he was rooted to the spot, unable to give up the illusion.   
  
Carter turned and her expression was soft, sympathetic, like she wanted to give John a cup of coffee, a cushiony couch, and the opportunity to talk it all out. He doubted that she would, but even so, he automatically inched towards the door, crossing his arms. “I was going to ask you the same thing,” she said, her hands clasping over her stomach.  
  
“Better than Atlantis,” he shot off. “Keller says I’m hunky-dory and Heightmeyer says I’m all unbrainwashed. But enough about me. How’s Atlantis?”  
  
“I think you saw-- and can see-- for yourself.” Carter drew up an overall map of the city and indicated sections on it as she spoke. “We’ve lost all control over the lights in the peripheries, and several areas there are experiencing fluctuating temperatures-- like here, this room is at forty degrees Celsius, while the room right next to it is at minus two degrees.”  
  
Still stuck to the door, John scanned the map from afar. His heart ached to see so many areas colored in the various emergency color codes: yellows turned to orange towards the perimeters, and flecks of red were scattered throughout. The core, too, seemed to be turning towards alarming shades of warmer colors.  
  
His throat threatened to close up. He’d been so damned oversensitive, ever since-- he willed his voice to come out normally. “Why is the basement all in red?”  
  
Carter ran a hand over the side of her face, and left it there, cupping her cheek. “We’ve lost all control over it: no gravity, as you saw for yourself when you were there, no lights, extreme fluctuations in temperature and humidity. And, more to the point, all the oxygen has been drained out. It’s off limits now.”  
  
“Right,” John nodded, aiming for a nonchalant tone. “Right.”  
  
“Actually, the four of you were lucky to get out when you did-- a few more minutes, and…”  
  
He had no lost love for the basement; he’d be happy to never set foot down there again. Some things should stay out of sight forever. But it was just as much a part of Atlantis as the rest, and it’d be a great loss, if they couldn’t get it back in order.  
  
He realized that his arms had gone from being crossed to hugging his torso, like some bizarre combination of comfort and self-defense. His arms covered his ribcage, his heart. At this rate, he’d soon want to be in bed with the covers over his head, clutching a teddy bear and sucking on his thumb, a carton of double-fudge brownie ice cream nearby to binge on when he was in danger of being overwhelmed.   
  
John forced his arms down to his sides and stood taller. He did not, however, move away from the door. He could only go so far. “Right,” he said, for a third time, but the word just slipped off his tongue. Repetition was safe, known. It helped him put his thoughts together and form them into words. “We should send out mission teams all over Atlantis, not just the affected areas--“  
  
“…Correct me if I’m wrong, but you’re not trying to come up with plans, are you?” Carter asked, incredulous. “You’ve only just recovered from a case of complete brainwashing, and even if Heightmeyer says you’re back to yourself, surely you need more than a couple of hours for recovery. I shouldn’t even have told you as much as I did, but I figured you’d get the news one way or another.”  
  
“But I’m fit,” John said, pulling out his smirk, his practiced dashing look. “I’m not a mindless zombie anymore, and Keller compared me to a fiddle.” He mimicked playing one, to prove just how a-okay he was.  
  
“And you haven’t technically been reinstated as the head of the military,” she reminded him.  
  
“Seriously?” he asked. “You’re going to try _that_ as an argument?”  
  
“Mostly as back-up to my main point, which is that you can’t just bounce back like nothing happened--“  
  
“Working on Atlantis is what’ll make me better,” he blurted out and immediately regretted it. He’d admitted to needing to be better. He’d admitted to weakness when he needed to prove how strong he was.  
  
But Carter didn’t order him out of her office and back to rest. Instead, she half-grinned. A point scored for reverse psychology? “That I can understand. All right. Dr. Keller and Dr. Heightmeyer did report that you showed no permanent damage, and we have work to do.”  
  
“Right,” John said, clasping his hands behind his back. “We’ll send out all the teams we can-- everyone who’s on duty will be sent out right away, and we’ll call back anyone that’s currently off-world so that they can help out. We should send out teams to each of the affected sectors, as well as to places not yet reached, and do a full-scale sweep--“  
  
“Is that such a good idea?” Carter interrupted.  
  
“Wasn’t done talking,” John snapped and her expression flinched. Great. He’d overreacted. That wouldn’t add to the idea that he was perfectly fine. “Sorry, just wanted to get it all out before I forgot anything. And, yes,” he raised his chin, trying to sound dignified, “We’ve got to do a full-scale search. None of the scientists or the sensors have found the reason for the loss of control over Atlantis, which still means it might be some _thing_ causing this. And if it is a thing, then we need to find it.”  
  
“I don’t like this,” Carter said, turning back to the map. “The last time we sent out an investigation team, you--“  
  
“I don’t think there’s going to be any more brainwashing,” John said quickly. There had better not be anymore brainwashing. No one deserved that. No one. Not even--  
  
“Now who’s interrupting who?” Carter challenged lightly. Great; yet another sign that he wasn’t keeping his cool. At least she’d taken it as a joke and wasn’t overreacting to his interruption. She probably thought it meant nothing more than excitement.   
  
“I doubt there’ll be any more brainwashing either-- if nothing else, I think we’ve learned our lesson-- but these areas are highly unstable. Worst case scenario, based on the evidence so far, we could have teams in places that start to get the oxygen drained out. And there might be worse than that, still.”  
  
John rubbed his mouth. “And what’s to say that we won’t start losing oxygen right now, in this very office? Just because we’re smack in the center doesn’t mean we’re safe.” She frowned; his argument was working. “We’re all at risk. For all we know, the city could decide to plunge underwater again, without a shield. What then? We have to _do_ something.” Taking action was infinitively better than sitting around thinking. John didn’t want to think-- not now, not anytime soon. Not until he was close to forgetting.  
  
Still worried, Carter studied the map again. “I wish there were a better way--“  
  
“What else can we do? Look, I don’t like sending people off into danger any more than you do, but it’s not as if we have any options. Other than waiting.” When she didn’t answer, he added, “With the oxygen, we can let the teams go in with space suits. We should have enough, regulations say we need a one-to-one ratio.”  
  
“Okay,” Carter laid a hand at the base of her throat. “Good thinking. That should eliminate most of the risks. Go ahead and organize the teams; I’ll keep working with the control room, see if we can’t find the problem through the computers.”  
  
“Will do,” John said. “Anything else I should know about?”  
  
She turned away from the map. “The IOA sent in some new guidelines this morning, before Atlantis lapsed back into this kind of activity. They want more off-world activity: more outposts on other worlds, more commerce, things like that.”  
  
“…Maybe we should consider that when Atlantis _isn’t_ going haywire.”  
  
“We’ll deal with that later,” Carter agreed.  
  
“Okay; off to work.”   
  
“Off to work,” Carter said. John turned to leave, but as the doors opened, she added, “Take care, Colonel.”  
  
He raised his hand and waved as he walked away. It seemed like the smart-aleck thing to do.  
  
He walked onto the bridge that led to Carter’s office, head down as he mentally planned how to organize the teams. He would have to check the rosters, see who was currently on duty, and convince those who weren’t to get on duty anyway--  
  
He didn’t realize that someone was standing on the other end of the bridge until he saw two feet in front of him. John could feel the blood drain from his face; he recognized those feet. He looked up.  
  
It was McKay.  
  
John froze in place, but on the inside, his heart galloped. The world was closing in, and not even a wall behind him would do any good, not with panic this bad.  
  
At least McKay seemed just as frightened; his whole face was pale. Even his lips had taken on a blue tinge. But seeing him like that, it made John feel dumber. McKay wasn’t a threat. Not anymore. “Sheppard, God, I--“  
  
“Gotta go,” John muttered, the world pressing in on him tighter. There was a buzz in his ears and he wanted to go, to bolt at a speed to meet his racing heart. But the bridge was narrow, and if he did that, he’d have to brush by McKay. Whose bright idea had it been to make the commander’s room accessible only by bridge?  
  
Jumping off the side had never seemed so tempting.   
  
“I don’t--” McKay went on, and John was then glad for the buzz in his head, because it almost droned him out. Almost. “I don’t even know where to begin, but, God, Sheppard, I’m so, so, so so--“  
  
“Whatever,” John cut in. “Whatever,” he said again, before McKay could begin to finish the second half of the word that’d been on the tip of his tongue. The world had narrowed down to almost nothing and he was so dizzy he might fall off the bridge, this time not by choice. “It’s done and over with, whatever, don’t think about it.”  
  
If John was firm on his two feet, it was out of sheer will. He wouldn’t show any more signs of weakness than he already had. He wouldn’t.  
  
“What? Really? That’s it?” Even through John’s panic, he couldn’t not pick up on McKay’s dubious joy. McKay had always been easy to predict. Then again, if that was the case, then why hadn’t John known that McKay would’ve done that to him? That he was even _capable_ of doing that?  
  
But he wasn’t going to think about that. He wasn’t ever going to think about that.  
  
“That’s it,” John repeated McKay’s words. It was easier to echo than to say something new. “And, hey, like I said, gotta go.” He indicated with his chin the space, a whole wide open space that was safer than here, behind McKay.  
  
“What? Oh! Oh! Um, here,” McKay scooted to the side, and now John could pass without any danger of touching him. He moved forward; he had to get out of there as soon as possible. “So we’re okay?” McKay asked. “Because, you have no idea, I’m so--“  
  
“Don’t think about it!” John yelled. He made himself walk slowly down the stairs and into a corridor, out of sight, before he let himself bolt.  
  
He did not think; he sprinted, becoming nothing but movement, his legs pumping and his adrenaline rushing. He only stopped when his lungs couldn’t take it anymore, on the verge of exploding.  
  
He leaned against the first vertical surface he found, and a breeze cooled him down. He looked up to see where that breeze had come from, and saw the ocean spread out before him, open and free.  
  
He’d made his way outside, to one of the upper balconies on the central spiral.   
  
He so had not handled that encounter with McKay well. “Fuck,” he muttered, and banged his fist against the glass behind him. “ _Fuck_.” He should’ve been cooler. Uncaring.  
  
It’d just been too damned unexpected. If he’d had some warning, John would’ve prepared himself and been all cool and collected, but no, McKay had appeared out of nowhere like a bad dream.  
  
But it was his own fault. He should’ve been more aware. He should’ve seen McKay coming. He’d been too wrapped up in his own thoughts, in himself, to notice anything else. A lack of awareness was fatal to soldiers. Always. He couldn’t afford such rookie mistakes.  
  
At least seeing McKay again hadn’t made him think of _that_. That was his biggest fear. John kind of knew what happened, but there was a big blank instead of any actual memories, and if he had anything to say about it, that’s the way it would stay.   
  
He ran his fingers his face, dragging his skin down as they went. He had a work to do; a city to get back under control. Actually, come to think of it, it was incredibly lucky that he’d ended up in one of the unaffected areas. Or maybe it wasn’t luck. He’d known, where to run. Even when he couldn’t think, he’d known where Atlantis had a safe space for him.  
  
John leaned harder against the surface, taking in deep breaths of the salty air, and slowly came back to himself.   
  


*

  
  
“Ready?” John asked, and the other three--Teyla, Ronon, and Lorne-- nodded. “Let’s go, then.”  
  
They went through the transporter to the floor above and started their trek; they had a ways to go. Technically they could’ve been transported closer to the Puddle Jumper bay, but this section of the hallway still had lights. The shorter path didn’t.  
  
No one spoke, and all John could hear were their footsteps and rustling fatigues as they made their ways through the eerily empty hall. This place should’ve been bustling with activity and conversation. Now, it was deadened, like the basement. At least it didn’t smell the same as down there; there was the leftover scent of human things, like shampoos and shoe rubber.   
  
Lorne was looking around carefully and slowly, but there was a jerkiness to his movements. Ronon’s walk lacked his usual grace, as if all of his muscles had been wound up and were waiting for the right moment to spring. Teyla moved more naturally, but her silence was heavy; she seemed deep in thought.   
  
With Atlantis falling further into unpredictability and the four of them heading straight for a problem area, there was good cause for all the tension. But with everyone this worried, they’d be making stupid mistakes. John opened his mouth, ready to make a joke at his own expense, but Teyla spoke first. “What I do not understand is why Rodney is not with us.”  
  
“Don’t need a scientist with us,” he said, smooth and quick. He’d expected this to come up, so he’d prepared an answer beforehand. “We’re just looking around, not doing any actual scientist stuff. And he’s doing us a bigger favor by staying back, working on the code.”  
  
“I disagree,” Teyla said, her stern expression like a recrimination. “We could most certainly use Rodney on this reconnaissance mission. After all, if we did come across something, we might not understand how to deal with it; we might not even recognize it as important.”   
  
“He’s doing us a bigger favor by being there,” John repeated. It was his mantra. The best lies are consistent and based on the truth, and, yeah, it was true; Rodney really was doing him a favor by being elsewhere. As far elsewhere as possible.   
  
Despite his skilled lying, though, Teyla pursed her lips.   
  
Fortunately, Ronon stepped in with: “Whatever we find, we’ll handle it.” John threw Ronon a quick appreciative look; at least some people were still reliable. Or seemed so, anyhow. He wasn’t sure anymore if such a thing as a reliable person could exist.   
  
“And if we can’t, we’ll bring it back to him,” Lorne said, grimly, eyes scanning all around him like he didn’t believe something wouldn’t jump out at them.  
  
This group was actually unbalanced: too many military-related personnel with little else. But McKay, obviously, couldn’t be included, and John had needed to substitute him. He’d picked Lorne because, more than anyone outside his team, they’d worked together the most. And, more to the point, he knew Lorne had his back on the field. It was the most John could hope or trust anyone to do, right now.  
  
Hopefully they wouldn’t have to drag something back for McKay to examine. The best-case scenario would be if they found a switch that magically made it all better. “That probably won’t be necessary, Lorne. We’ve got four big brains here; that’s got to count for something. I’m sure we can figure it out on our own.”   
  
Teyla’s frown deepened, her eyebrows coming closer together. She must be dying to ask what the hell was wrong with him and McKay. “Nothing,” he’d reply. But with any luck, she wouldn’t ask; Teyla could see too much for his own good. Once she got started on the questions, she might not stop until she was satisfied.  
  
John slowed his pace so that he’d be walking alongside Ronon, who’d been a couple of meters behind. Ronon wouldn’t ask questions. He wouldn’t press. He might _know_ that something was off, but he wouldn’t ask.   
  
The tense silence resumed, but that was better than the risk of Teyla prodding for more information.   
  
When they finally reached the door to the Jumper Bay, they formed a semi-circle around it. “Before we go through,” John said, “just want to remind everyone that we have no idea what’ll happen once we go in there. Right now, it’s a bit hotter than it should be, but that’s about it.”  
  
Teyla glanced at everyone in the group, at the door, then back at John. “Should we not be going in with space suits, like the other teams?”  
  
“Well--” Before calling the team, he’d checked out the suits. Stood in front of them for several minutes, contemplated them. Those things were tight. Cramped. Like someone wrapped all around you, squeezing, and squeezing, until you couldn’t breath, overtaking you.   
  
John shuddered. He couldn’t go in one. It was stupid and irrational and a pathetic lack of control, but there was no way he could get into a suit. But damn if he was going to sit around doing nothing. And they could do it, definitely, without the suits. That was why he’d picked one of the least affected areas.  
  
John had an answer prepared for this question as well. “Even if we can’t predict the changes, there’s a definite trend-- the oxygen drain happens late in the game, after all the other fuck-ups. So we should be okay suit-less.”  
  
Half of Teyla’s mouth smirked, one eyebrow going up like she had several ideas of what was and, more specifically, was not okay.   
  
John stepped closer to Ronon.  
  
“Maybe,” Lorne spoke with a straight face. “We should get this over with, before we end up in room-sized coffin?” And John grinned; good old Lorne. Nothing was quite as distracting as sarcastic black humor.   
  
John straightened his back and squared his shoulders. “This is what we’ll do: we’ll do a run-through over the outer perimeter and work our way inwards, on my command, until we reach the puddle jumpers themselves. Since we have no idea what we’re looking for, I want every nook and cranny searched, every surface turned over. Once we’ve explored everything, we get out. Got it?”  
  
They all nodded, even Teyla, who offered no criticisms. Good.   
  
He opened the door. A wave of heat hit him, making him itchy and irritated in his military fatigues. “Let’s go.”  
  
But it wasn’t until they were all in the room and everyone started head off in different directions, with Lorne heading left and Ronon and Teyla going right, that he realized that he’d forgotten to tell them how to split up. “Stop!” He yelled.   
  
The tree of them turned to him expectantly and with some skepticism. “What do you think you’re doing, running off any way you like?” He wiped at his forehead; sweat had already started to form.   
  
“We were following your orders,” Teyla said patiently. “Or were we meant to be doing something else?”  
  
“Yeah, ask me for more details,” he snapped. “Teyla, you go with Lorne to the right, and Ronon, you’re going left with me.” If they’d been skeptical before, now they were incredulous, Teyla especially. Ronon and Lorne hid their doubts better, probably because of their greater experience with following superior’s orders. Even if said orders were stupid.   
  
Part of John knew that he was being irrational and going overboard. Flexibility was a good thing, and that was how he usually rolled. But right now, he needed things to be just so. According to plan and controlled.   
  
Still looking at him suspiciously, the three of them split up as he’d told them to. Good.   
Being obeyed so easily made him feel cleansed, like everything would be okay. Things would go the way he wanted them to.  
  
But the irritation would be back before long, erasing any of the relief he’d felt.  
  
The dock was huge, half a kilometer long, filled with everything from cardboard boxes to wooden crates to the puddle jumpers themselves. There was no lack of things to explore. Yet John was torn between keeping an eye out on the other two-- an impossible task, given the size and the contours of the dock-- to make sure they didn’t do anything he hadn’t told them to.  
  
In fact, he was driven to look through everything himself, even if Ronon, with his usual elegance, could shift through the material faster than John could. It rankled at John that Ronon usually reached the boxes first, opening them and going through their contents before he could. _John_ should be doing that. He should be searching the whole bay on his own; the others were redundant.   
  
“Let me,” John said, aggressive, unable to prevent Ronon from getting to yet another crate first. Ronon, holding his hands up, obliged and stepped back. Again John was assuaged. He was in charge. No one else threatened to take over.  
  
He grabbed a wrench and dug it into the crate’s side and, before pushing down, wiped away the sweat dripping into his eyes.   
  
“You okay there?” Ronon asked.  
  
“Hunky dory,” John replied and pushed down. But he must’ve pushed too hard, or something, because of just opening, the crate cracked in half, and hundreds of valuable electrical pieces from Earth poured out.   
  
“Fuck!” John exclaimed, then again, for good measure. “Fuck! Look at what you made me do! That’s who knows how many thousands dollars ruined--” Ronon stared at him, head titled, his face melting into a cool expression. John’s anger subsided into embarrassment, and he pulled at his collar, feeling hotter than ever.  
  
Geez. He couldn’t even say sorry about how stupid he was being without sounding even more stupid, or without admitting he’d been stupid. But Ronon didn’t need all the politeness and niceties everyone else expected, especially if they came in words. Maybe he didn’t need an apology.   
  
As if to confirm his thoughts, Ronon patted John on the back  
  
John flinched at that touch. Not much, but flinch he did.   
  
“The sooner we get out of here,” Ronon said, “the better.”  
  
“You said it,” John agreed.  
  
After a harried yet thorough search-- at least on his side, John couldn’t vouch for Teyla and Lorne-- the two groups met halfway through the circuit. “Nothing,” Ronon said.  
  
“We found nothing either,” Teyla said, the shoulders falling as she sighed.  
  
“You sure?” John asked.   
  
“We went through everything,” Teyla said.  
  
“Left no surface unturned,” Lorne confirmed.  
  
John, wiping at the sweat all over his neck, glanced at the half that he hadn’t explored. He wanted nothing more to declare they’d now switch sides, so that he could go through theirs and make sure they hadn’t missed anything. But it was just getting hotter. It’d get intolerable before long. And between retreading ground and leaving whole areas unexplored, the former sucked worse.   
  
“Not sure there’s even anything to find,” Ronon said, jamming his hands into his pockets.   
  
“What,” John demanded, close to angry. “You think Atlantis is going berserk for no good reason? It’s going nuts just because it feels like it?”  
  
“Nah,” Ronon said. “Just don’t think it’s a reason you could find lying around, like a lost bullet.”  
  
“There is something,” John insisted. When he wiped at his neck, his hand came away moist with sweat. He suddenly didn’t want to be in Ronon’s company anymore. “And we’re going to find it.”  
  
“Not if we stay around talking all day,” Lorne said, shifting his weight from one foot the to the other. “How about we leave the chatting about finding things for later and get to the looking?”  
  
“Now there’s some good sense!” John said. “We don’t have much left to get through; we’ll sweep through the puddle jumpers and then get the hell out.” Again the three of them nodded and again that put John at peace, though a little less than last time. Just because they followed his orders didn’t mean everything would run according to plan. Not that anything _ever_ ran smoothly, but John had never wished so hard before for predictability. “This time I’ll go with Lorne. Teyla and Ronon, you’re together.”  
  
“Any particular reason why we’re switching pairs?” Teyla asked.  
  
John shrugged. “It’s good to break things up. Wouldn’t want teamwork to get monotonous.”  
  
“No, of course not,” Teyla muttered. John pretended not to hear.  
  
As they walked into the first of their assigned jumpers, John didn’t bother to try to wipe away the sweat anymore. Not even Afghanistan had been this bad. It’d been a soul-sucking dry heat but this was humid and pressing, like another person’s skin against his own. Maybe the suits would’ve been a better option, with the climate control. But he shuddered again to think of how tightly they trapped you in. No. The heat and humidity were oppressive, but the suits would’ve been worse.  
  
“You doing better, sir?” Lorne asked. He riffled through the equipment in the front section of the puddle jumper, quick and efficient. John had been asked that question several times since coming back to himself, but Lorne was the first soldier under his command to bring it up.  
  
“I’m back on duty, aren’t I?” John asked, trying to keep the testiness out of his voice. He opened a wire panel and poked experimentally.   
  
“True, sir,” Lorne replied. “But that doesn’t mean much.”  
  
Couldn’t anyone on this mission not give him grief?  
  
John slammed shut the wire panel. “We’re done here-- though, wait, we should try turning on the jumper first, make sure that’s in order.”  
  
“Sure.” Lorne, the closest one to the control panel, started the sequence to turn it on. John waited for the jumper to light up, but it didn’t.  
  
Instead, Lorne screamed, wordless and painful, convulsing.  
  
“ _Lorne_!” John yelled and ran for him. He was already falling, weightless. He caught him before he hit the floor, but great good that did. The worst of the damage had already been done.   
  
John, running on a calmness he’d learned to maintain in the worst of situations, eased him to the floor. “Lorne! C’mon, man!” He didn’t answer, but at least he was breathing. He pressed two fingers to Lorne’s jugular: there was a rapid heartbeat.   
  
  
John forced his hands to stay not tremble as he patted Lorne’s chest and abdomen, trying to feel out what had happened. He barely heard the running footsteps into the jumper, focused on tearing open Lorne’s vest and shirt, to check if the harm was visual.  
“John, what has happened?!” Teyla exclaimed as she and Ronon rushed to crowd around Lorne.  
  
“Don’t know,” John said. There were no physical traces of damage on Lorne’s torso. “One moment he’s turning on the jumper, and the next…”  
  
That’s when John smelled the charred flesh.  
  
Ronon must’ve caught on faster, for he was already reaching for Lorne’s right hand, turning his palm upwards. Red, angry blisters were forming. John’s throat tightened at the sight. “Looks like the electrocution of a lifetime,” Ronon said.  
  
This was his fault. This happened to Lorne because John had told him to be here, to come in without a suit, to turn on the jumper. This happened entirely because of the orders he had given.   
  
“I think he will be alright, but we must get him to the infirmary,” Teyla said.  
  
“Right.” John got to his knees to pick up Lorne, but Ronon already had Lorne in his arms, like he was no heavier than a coat, and rose to his feet.  
  
“Be careful,” Teyla warned. “We cannot give him any additional injuries.”  
  
“You think I’m gonna treat him like a bag of scrap junk?” And, indeed, John saw the care Ronon took to keep Lorne’s head stable against his chest.  
  
“Doctor Keller,” Teyla radioed. “We have had an accident-- we think that Colonel Lorne has been electrocuted, but we are not certain. His right hand has been severely burned. We are bringing him to the infirmary now.”  
  
With Ronon and Teyla taking lead, and John suddenly not fast enough to keep up, John felt immobilized, useless. He stayed on his knees, staring up at the other two.  
  
“You coming, or what?” Ronon asked. “We’ve done what we can here, and we gotta get Lorne back.”  
  
“Right,” John said, feeling heavy as he got up. “Right.”  
  


*

  
  
John leaned, his arms crossed, into a corner formed by a wall and a cabinet, half-hidden from the world. Having walls against his back hadn’t helped so far, not with the things that mattered, but it was still comforting.  
  
Across the entrance room to the infirmary, Teyla and Ronon discussed something, though he couldn’t make out what they were saying. Their heads were bent towards each other, and John felt a twinge of envy at their evident ease with one another, but he had no desire to join them.  
  
They’d been there ever since Ronon had dragged Lorne in. John wondered if they’d wait as long as he would. Probably. They were like that. And he was like that, too. But this time, he might be more motivated by guilt than concern. But no one was perfect. What about those two? Were they keeping an eye out for John, or waiting for news about Lorne? Maybe it was both.  
  
John squeezed himself up tighter against the surfaces behind him, a cabinet knob digging into his back. Atlantis was going down, Lorne _had_ gone down, and they still had no answers.  
  
No answers-- unless, that was, one of the missions had found something, or the scientists, pouring over the code, had finally figured it out. At this point, John didn’t just want answers; he’d be happy with hints. He scratched his ear, tempted to radio the control room. But McKay might answer. And it shouldn’t be a big deal, talking to McKay. But it was a risk John wasn’t up to taking right now, not when his other one, exploring the Jumper Bay, had gone so badly.  
  
They’d call him if there was anything worth knowing.   
  
“Colonel?” Keller called out, walking into the room. John’s head shot up, examining her face and posture for signs. She looked tired, but that was fairly normal, the way she was overworked. And, thankfully, there were no traces of blood or other bodily fluids on her shirt. That had to be a good omen. She looked around. “Have either of you seen the Colonel--” They indicated wordlessly to turn around, and she did so. “Oh, there you are!”   
  
John didn’t miss the odd glance she gave him, so he faked a grin. “Practicing my camouflage,” he said, and then felt out of place. Waiting to hear about Lorne’s condition was no time to be cracking jokes. Or maybe it _was_. Cracking jokes in dark moments was what he did, right? But he wasn’t sure anymore what it was he did, or who he was.   
  
He felt a stranger in his own skin; he wanted to act normal, to keep everyone from worrying and prying, but how could he, if he didn’t even remember what normal was like? Maybe he was past the brainwashing, but he wasn’t sure he’d recovered all of himself back yet. Wasn’t sure he ever would.  
  
But this wasn’t the time for self-pity. It never was the time for self-pity.   
  
Ronon and Teyla approached them, and John wished he’d been the one to go to them; now he was trapped, between walls and other people. His heart started to race, but he forced himself to keep breathing at the same rate as before.  
  
“How is he, Dr. Keller?” Teyla prompted.  
  
“He should be alright,” she said, calm, and John felt the muscles in his shoulders relax. Lorne would be okay. Everything would be okay. “You were right about him being electrocuted-- he received a shock of at least 200 Watts, which is never good news, but he seems to have a high resistance. And we’ve got Atlantis’s advanced equipment here, so he should recover well.”  
  
“That’s a lot of ‘should’s,” John interrupted. “’ _Should_ ’ be means ‘maybe not. Care to explain that?”  
  
“We still have to wait and see,” Keller explained, wiping her forehead. “We’ll have to wake for him to wake up to see the extent of his neurological damage, and if nothing else, he might not recover full use of his hand; it got burned pretty badly.”  
  
Not recover full use of his hand? But a soldier’s life depended on his hands.   
  
So his orders hadn’t killed Lorne, but they may have cost him his career. John felt ill, stomach twisting up. He’d been reckless, demanding, and stupid, and someone else was paying the price for it. In trying to keep control over himself, he’d screwed over someone else.  
  
“We’re doing everything we can for him…” Keller trailed off.   
  
“Can we see him?” Teyla asked, but Keller was already shaking her head.  
  
“Not yet, no. He’s sleeping right now, and if you come in, he might wake up. He needs all the rest he can get right now, and no excitement.”   
  
John rubbed at the back of one of his hands. “Is there anything we can do?” If you had to ask, there probably wasn’t anything to be done. But asking was better than not trying at all.   
  
Keller smiled wryly. “You can wait. And make sure the energy flow to the infirmary doesn’t get cut off, otherwise we’re losing him and a whole lot of others. I’m actually surprised we’ve lasted this long without any problems. Try to keep it that way, yeah?”  
  
“Leave it to me,” John said, pulling all his self-confidence together and putting it into a single sentence, which still reeked of patheticness. They were just words. Words meant nothing without actions.  
  
He couldn’t let the medical bay, or any more parts of Atlantis, go down. But if he’d lost Lorne this time in trying to save the city, and his own free will the time before that, he didn’t see how he could do any better without even more losses.  
  
“Yes,” Teyla said, firmly. “We will do all we can do to bring things back to normal.”  
  
John closed his eyes. Normal. Wouldn’t that be nice.  
  


*

“All external sectors have been cut off from the energy flow, and portions of the main tower continue lose power. Most recently, some of the lower floor dormitories are experiencing fluctuations in electricity.” Carter explained all this in a calm, controlled voice, betraying no stress. The last time he’d looked, she’d been sitting with a straight back and her hands clasped over the table top. He assumed she hadn’t changed position.   
  
John, who already knew everything she was relating and, in fact, had traced it out for himself on the maps, listened, his elbows on the table and his head between his hands. He stared down at the glossy, black table top. How could this conference table be glowing, in perfect condition, while the rest of Atlantis went to hell?  
  
Candance, in the seat next to John, piped up. “How long do we have before we lose control over the central tower?”  
  
“No more than a week,” McKay said from the other side of the table, and John’s stomach clenched tighter. He was sick of getting sickened just by McKay’s presence. Would it always be like this? “But we probably only have a couple more days, given the increasing rate of deterioration.”  
  
Murmurs broke out all around the table; John did not contribute to them. He had discussion enough running through his head. Why was this happening? Why couldn’t he stop it? What could he do? Or, more to the point, why _couldn’t_ he do anything?   
  
Teyla and Ronon should be here; they knew Atlantis better than almost anyone. He’d tried to convince Carter to let them come, but she’d refused, saying that they didn’t need to create even more confusion by inviting people to top-level meetings when their levels of responsibility were under question. They’d already dared enough, against the IOA, by letting the two of them go on security-sensitive missions. Missions, John did not need to be reminded, that had ended badly. Those results had cast doubts on his competence, giving them less leeway to play with the rules.  
  
After all these years keeping Atlantis running, and a handful of things could still ruin his reputation: a bad decision or two, a record of disobedience, and being forced to-- but no one knew about that. No one but John and McKay. And John did not think that McKay would tell anyone. It wasn’t the kind of thing you blabbed about, and not even McKay would be so dense as to think that.  
  
But even if McKay kept the secret to his dying day, John wouldn’t forget. Couldn’t, as much as he wanted to. The knowledge of it bled into his every thought and feeling, even if he’d kept the actual memories from running through his head. And he’d see to it that it stayed that way. Once had been enough.   
  
Carter started to talk again, thankfully. He could use the distraction. Pity that her chosen topic wasn’t much better than his thoughts. “No, none of the missions so far have turned up any information. We sent out ten different teams, and aside from getting caught in several of Atlantis’ transitions for the worse, they did not uncover anything new.”  
  
“Transitions for the worse?” Someone whose voice John didn’t recognize asked, and he didn’t bother to look up to see who it was. He knew what Carter was going to say next, and he’d rather keep his head down for it.  
  
“One team,” Carter said, “was in a room that was suddenly drained of oxygen.”  
  
All the leftover side-discussion ceased, silencing the room.  
  
“Did they manage to get out?” Candance asked after a long pause.  
  
“Two died,” Carter said curtly. “So you can see we’re facing serious problems. We need to take action, but…”  
  
“How about an evacuation?” Coleman suggested.  
  
“If the situation continues, we’ll have no choice but to evacuate all personnel from the city,” Carter said, and he didn’t know whether to admire or wonder at how her voice didn’t waver. “But we’d rather the staff remained just a bit longer, in case we manage to uncover a solution before it’s too late.”  
  
“Yeah,” John said, surprising himself. He hadn’t meant to speak. But now that he’d started, he went all the way, raising his head and making eye contact with the other people in the meeting. “We have to stay here as long as possible; if we don’t fix this here and now, there’s no coming back. We’ll have lost Atlantis.”  
  
Again discussions broke throughout the room.  
  
Thing was, _could_ something this broken be fixed? And even if it could, could it be done so quickly, or so easily? He was a soldier and the army wasn’t in the business of reconstruction, but even he knew this much: healing took time.   
  
The conversations grew louder, more passionate. Let them. Maybe a good idea could come out of it.  
  
“We could,” McKay said, over the fray, and John shifted in his chair, hating himself for letting even that much of a reaction show. Why did McKay have to be the one with all the bright ideas? Not that they shouldn’t use them, if they were good, but that didn’t meant he wanted to hear McKay any more than necessary. “We could reboot the city’s primary system.”  
  
He did not like the sound of that, not one bit.  
  
“Reboot?” Carter echoed. “You want to recover the core OS?”  
  
Despite himself, John laid his palms on the table and looked over at McKay. He kept clenching and unclenching his hands, sometimes rubbing his fingers against each other. So he wasn’t entirely comfortable with the suggestion.  
  
“Yeah, the copy we have is from just before Atlantis started to go crazy,” and here McKay glanced quickly at John, biting his lips.  
  
“You want to wipe out the past,” John broke out.  
  
“Yes! I mean--” Rodney blinked rapidly, biting his lips again, now looking at John in earnest, not breaking eye contact. “Just the bad parts, so that we can go back to normal--“  
  
They were talking about two entirely different things. John knew this. It still pissed him off. “You can’t vanish away the parts that bother you, McKay, like they never happened.”  
  
McKay went white, then red; he looked away. Good. He got it.  
  
But then Coleman asked, “I don’t know, it sounds like a good idea. What do you mean, exactly?”   
  
“We try to go back to how things were,” McKay said miserably. “If there’s something wrong in any of the code that we haven’t caught, going back to an earlier version should fix it.”  
  
Murmurs started up for the third time. John leaned back into this chair; this was getting out of his hands. “McKay,” John enunciated, trying to keep at least the appearance of coolness. He hated how he kept revealing his moods-- those were supposed to be private. “Mind if we have a word? Outside? Just to settle some questions.”  
  
McKay’s chin worked up and down, like a fish flopping out of water. “I-- uh-- why don’t we discuss it here--“  
  
“Wouldn’t want to bother everyone else with the details,” John smiled thinly, all fake. “And they can continue their own discussions, figure out what they think. None of you mind, right?”  
  
There was a chorus of “of course not, Colonel.” Politeness even in times of hardship. You had to love how far the conditioning went, even when all you wanted to do was to beat someone into a pulp.   
  
John stepped out into the corridor, moving several steps away and crossing his arms. McKay followed, reluctant. At least he kept the distance between them, rubbing his hands close to his chest.  
  
“A reboot?” John asked. “Seriously? Get rid everything in between?”  
  
“What?” McKay asked, sticking out lower lip a little. “It’s just a program--“  
  
“It is _not_ just a program,” John interrupted “It’s Atlantis, and that program is its consciousness. You can’t just go and erase the parts you don’t like because it doesn’t mesh with what you want! It doesn’t work that way! You have no right--“  
  
“How is it any different from everything else we do?!” McKay gesticulated. “How is it any worse than when I, or anyone else, goes in and rewrites sections of the program? How many times have you told me to rewrite this or that, to make Atlantis have a better defense shield, or to call off a quarantine--“  
  
John went cold all over, like his veins had been filled with ice water.   
  
If McKay noticed John’s horror, he showed no sign of it, continuing with his rant. “We’re just trying to survive, Sheppard, and keep on living here. Go on with the future. And--” he stopped suddenly, a hopeful, tentative look crossing his face.  
  
John had a hunch of what McKay wanted to say next. It’d never been hard to read McKay, and after all their years of working together, he’d even become predictable. John knew what to expect from him. Or he’d thought he’d known. He’d never have thought McKay was capable of that, of those clammy hands on his back, that stench of sweat--  
  
The ice water in his veins froze. He couldn’t go back there, and focused on the McKay with him now, and stared at him, hard, daring him to go on. But the dare was a bluff. Don’t go there, John thought. Don’t.  
  
But there McKay went, with all the elegance of a drunkard.  
  
“It’s not personal, Sheppard,” McKay said, his eyes glinting, and suddenly John had to force his hand to stay by his side, because he wanted nothing more than to hit him. “I’m not saying I want the same for-- us-- guess we can’t erase, you know, _that_ , and even if we could, I wouldn’t know where to even begin, it’s not like I can tell you what to do any more and boom expect you to obey-- oh, god, that was the worst thing I could’ve said, isn’t it.” Rodney put a hand over his face, rubbing it. “That’s not what I meant. What I _really_ want to say is I’m so--“  
  
“You know what?” John cut him off. “Do it. Do your stupid reboot. Erase the past day, week, year, whatever. Wipe it all away. It’s rubbish, anyway.”   
  
“Seriously?” McKay asked.  
  
“Yeah,” John said, crossing his arms so that his hands were in his armpits. “Maybe it’s better if Atlantis forgets-- just, gets rid of it all.” He wouldn’t mind a reboot of his own; he almost wished McKay could still order him to do things, because then he could tell John to lose those memories, and that’d be that. Because John himself couldn’t forget-- couldn’t help remembering how McKay’s hand pinched his wrist as he pinned it to the bed, or--  
  
John covered his mouth. “Go back in.” He couldn’t go in before McKay, since then he’d have to pass beside him. McKay gave an abrupt, half-aborted nod before heading back. Once there was no danger of contact, John followed.  
  
“Everyone in favor of the reboot?” McKay asked faintly, like he didn’t believe what he was asking. Or maybe he doubted the feasibility of the project.  
  
“That’s the consensus,” Carter confirmed. “Since we don’t have other options.”  
  
“That’s the spirit,” McKay pumped his fist, but his voice faltered. “I’ll, uh, get to it, then. It might take a few hours to set up, since first I have to--“  
  
“A few hours is fine,” Carter said, then sighed. “It’ll give us the time to request permission from the IOA.”  
  
John’s ears perked up at that. “Permission? Seriously?”  
  
“I’m afraid so,” Carter grimaced, getting to her feet. “Between the recent instability here and the last set of missions that ended unfortunately,” and John winched at the reminder, “the IOA has put us on an emergency system. I think about only thing they expect us to do without their input is breathe. And maybe eat.”  
  
All these restrictions and they might as well not be breathing anymore. “Which means?”  
  
“Our hands are tied,” Carter supplied. “No radical changes in code, no mission-sending, no major or medium-sized decisions without consulting them first.”  
  
“That’ll work well,” John muttered.  
  


*

  
  
The last beams of day light streamed onto the floor, giving the wood floor a warm glow. How could something still be this beautiful, when everything was going so wrong?  
  
John looked towards the walls with no sunlight; it didn’t feel right, being a part of that image. Or maybe he didn’t want to be a part of it; it made him feel dirty, by comparison.  
  
“That does not sound like a good turn of events,” Teyla commented. She sat against the wall, legs crossed and back straight, between the patches of sunlight.   
  
“I’d call it crappy, but whatever,” John said. He gripped his two fighting sticks. “Yo, Ronon, we doing this or what?”  
  
“Just waiting for you,” Ronon replied, almost lazily. He hadn’t moved into a fighting stance, but that only meant he was waiting for the first strike. Should John go in for a frontal attack? Too obvious; Ronon would strike him down in no time flat. Maybe a fake attack to the stomach but actually go for the legs.  
  
“I hope Rodney’s idea for a reboot works,” Teyla said. John ignored her. They had a while to wait before the reboot went through, and he wasn’t going to dwell on it. It’d drive him crazy, the waiting.  
  
Aiming for the side, John pounced, raising his stick.  
  
“Though I am not certain he’s on the right track,” John half-heard Teyla say. Ronon met both of John’s sticks with his own, sliding them upwards, unbalancing him; he fell straight to the ground. “How about you, Ronon? What do you think?”  
  
“Dunno.” Ronon offered a hand to John, who refused it. He had his pride, and besides, he’d chosen a non-contact sport on purpose. John’s skin was his own, for now, safe in its isolation. He didn’t think he could take anyone touching him-- he trusted no one to do so, not even Ronon.  
  
To be honest, he wasn’t sure he could trust anyone for anything.  
  
“I don’t do the technology stuff,” Ronon said. “Don’t understand any of it, so I leave it to other people. It works out.”  
  
“Not here for chatting,” John growled, swiping his stick towards Ronon’s abdomen as he got up in a single jump; Ronon side-stepped it with ease.   
  
“Maybe you should be,” and even as John concentrated on the fight, circling around Ronon, he couldn’t miss the sternness in Teyla’s voice. “You have not been yourself since the brainwashing. I wish you would talk about what happened, what’s bothering you--“  
  
John raised his stick straight above his head and brought it directly down onto Ronon, and even as he fell through with the attack, he knew he’d regret it. He was defenseless.   
  
Without any difficulty, Ronon raised his knee and gutted John; he choked and, oh god, now Ronon was trying to hold him, hands on his shoulders. John wrenched himself away, reeling back a few steps, his stomach hurting from the blow.  
  
“Your fighting sucks today,” Ronon observed, twirling his stick. He was breathing normally and he hadn’t broken out into a sweat. It was as if he hadn’t been fighting at all. That’s how much of a challenge John was giving him. He burned up with indignation. “Not that you ever put up much of a fight, but you don’t usually make such stupid mistakes.”  
  
John didn’t even see the move happening; he just felt the strike against his back, and doubled over. “See?” Ronon asked. “You’re not focusing.”  
  
“It is because he is worried,” Teyla said. “And he will not admit it.”  
  
“If I wanted psychoanalysis, I’d have gone to Heightmeyer,” John said, standing up, ignoring the pain in his back. “I’m here for a good old fashioned bit of sparring.” He didn’t want to talk. Not about Lorne, in the hospital bay, not about the stupid IOA’s demands-- well, he’d already vented about that one-- and not about what had happened, kisses where there shouldn’t be--  
  
John attacked again, without thinking. He didn’t have any idea what move he tried, he just _threw_ himself at Ronon, haphazardly, to clear his mind.   
  
When Ronon grabbed his wrist, John was oddly more aware of the clatter of the sticks falling to the ground, though his body did jolt at the touch. And then he was being turned, and he was on the floor, with his arm pinned behind his back and an enormous weight on him. “No,” John couldn’t help but whimper, struggling, but it was no use: he was stuck between the floor and the person above him. “No,” he said, louder, more desperate, and still immobile, he shuddered, he thrashed, because at any moment now, the person above him might put their hands elsewhere, tracing patterns that weren’t theirs to trace, they had no business doing that, no business using him, kissing and moaning like they had any right-- “No!”  
  
He didn’t get why or how, because the way this scenario played out, it should’ve gotten much worse, unspeakably worse, but then the weight was gone and his wrist was free and he could move his arm again.  
  
But even if the weight and bind was gone, the thoughts were still there, and he couldn’t stop them. He couldn’t stop the feeling of a stomach rubbing against his and of the sweat that, oh god, was everywhere, even in his nose, and the smell was overpowering--   
  
Distantly, he heard a “John,” and that was a part of the memory too. “John, John.” The voice and the tone he was hearing differed from the one in the memory, but it was still the same word, over and over, and he could remember other sounds, like the ragged breath, the moans, right in his ear--  
  
Fingers touched his side. Actual fingers; this wasn’t a party of the memory.  
  
“Don’t touch me!” he burst out.  
  
And that’s when he could see again. Teyla and Ronon hovered over him, concerned and confused. Teyla’s hand hung in mid-air, like she’d pulled it back suddenly. The fingers touching his side were gone.  
  
He was panting, lying on the floor. “John?” Teyla asked.  
  
He opened his mouth to say something; nothing came out.   
  
At that moment, a siren sounded off. “Atlantis self-destruct set off to go in five hours and thirty three minutes,” a polite yet firm female voice announced. Even in his confused state, John had enough presence of mind to exchange bewildered glances with Teyla and Ronon.   
  


*

  
  
Times like these, you didn’t ask; you ran.  
  
John ran as fast as he could, his heart strumming in his ears, his feet pounding a path they knew automatically. He never did need to think of how to get where, in Atlantis; he just _went_.  
  
He was dimly aware of Teyla beside him, maintaining the same pace, and that Ronon, faster than either of them, had disappeared from sight. That was okay. John already knew where Ronon was headed. They all had the same target: the control room.  
  
As they ran, the self-destruct alarm rang loud and clear, in time to John’s heartbeat.  
  
It couldn’t have taken more than a few minutes, but it felt like forever before they burst into the control room. Carter, Zelenka, and McKay were all huddled over one terminal, with Ronon was hanging off to the side, hunched and tense and ready to jump into action. John and Teyla headed straight for them. “What happened? What’s going on?”  
  
Carter looked upwards, at the ceiling, perhaps in search of the source of the alarm’s ubiquitous sound. “I think the ‘what’ is fairly obvious…”   
  
“Yeah, okay, hahahah.” John put his hands on his hips, standing with his legs slightly apart. “But why, exactly, is the city about to blow itself sky-high?” But even as he said the words, he had a pretty good idea whose _fault_ that’d be, glancing at McKay. He was white and miserable and self-incriminating, just like that morning when they’d woken up together; John’s stomach flipped.  
  
“I don’t know,” McKay said wretchedly, squeezing his hands, “We were in the middle of rebooting-- we’d extracted the old data intact and were reintegrating it into the system--“  
  
“And I suppose you think the two are unrelated!” John exploded. “I _told_ you this was a crappy idea, McKay.”  
  
“You were the one who told me to go through with it!” McKay said testily, the whiteness in his face giving way to red.   
  
“Only because--“  
  
But before he could go any further, two voices cut him off. “Hey!” Carter said at the same time as Teyla exclaimed, “John! Rodney!” In face of their determination, both John and McKay stopped arguing, and sheepishly looked down to their feet.   
  
“The city is preparing to destroy itself,” Teyla reminded him. “Let us try to work on stopping that instead of bickering about who did what, alright? How can we undo the self-destruct? If it was started by the reboot, could undoing that set things right?”  
  
“That’s what we’re trying to figure out,” Zelenka said, and then, after a pause, pushed up his glasses and added: “Or at least _I_ am.”  
  
“Now is not the time for insults, okay?” McKay said, aggravated. Maybe so, but it still cheered John up, a little, to see someone throw him about.   
  
“I couldn’t agree more,” Carter said, drumming her fingers on the panel. “Do we have any leads on how to stop the self-destruct?”  
  
“None, nada, zip, zilch,” McKay said, leaning in so close to the computer that his forehead touched the screen. “Not one measly, miserable clue.”  
  
“But we will keep searching,” Zelenka promised. “Down to the last second. This isn’t the first time we’ve had a self-destruct to stop.”  
  
“Optimistic thinking; I like that,” Carter grinned. “You keep working on that, then. Meanwhile--” she turned to John. “At this point, I think we can’t not consider evacuation.”  
  
“Might not be a bad idea,” Ronon said. “It’d suck if everyone was stuck here when it goes boom.”  
  
John looked pointedly to Teyla and Ronon, raising his eyebrows and perking his mouth. “I don’t know, Colonel Carter,” he said, sarcastic. “Aren’t you letting slip too much, what’s the term, ‘security-sensitive information,’ to these two?”  
  
“We are merely trying--” Teyla started, but John nodded discreetly at her and she stopped.  
  
“In fact, I’m pretty sure that Ms. Emmagan here was about to order the scientists around. I don’t know, weren’t we supposed to be more careful with our secrets and resources?”  
  
Carter smirked at him, and it was hard to tell if she was exasperated or amused. “Is that a hint, Colonel?”  
  
“Maybe.” The city might go down, but if he could take down the bureaucracy a few pegs while it did so, like hell he wouldn’t grab the chance.   
  
“Incoming message from the IOA!” someone in the room yelled out.   
  
John groaned. Just when things were almost about to start to look up. They couldn’t possibly be contributing anything useful. “It’s probably a note asking us to not forget to lock the doors at night, or to use a different brand of to wax the floors. Don’t we have bigger fish to keep from frying?”  
  
“Let’s at least take a look,” Carter said. “What does the message say, Carl?”  
  
Leave it to Carter to have learned, in about a week, everyone’s names. Unlike John, who’d been here for over three years and still constantly drew blanks.  
  
The guy apparently called Carl started to read out loud. “With the self-destruct--”   
  
The sirens sounded louder than ever in John’s ears, or maybe it was his blood pounding harder, out of sheer anger. “Whose bright idea was it to tell them?” He asked coolly.   
  
“It’s been set up so that they automatically receive notices through the gate about extreme circumstances: self-destruct, submersion, shield going down, shield going back up, quarantine…” And maybe John wasn’t being as cool as he thought he was, because Carl shrank back from his gaze.   
  
But frankly, he could care less; his hands shook with indignation. “Since when,” he said, too loudly, to no one in particular and to everyone. This definitely didn’t fall under “cool,” and, from the way everyone flinched, aside from Teyla, who maintained an expression of almost-at-the-limit patience, John knew his outburst wasn’t going to be well-received, but he couldn’t help it. “Since when is everything we do dictated--“  
  
“Two hours,” the same polite yet stern voice from before said, “to self-destruction.”  
  
That stopped his rant short. He looked around the room for answers, even glancing at McKay, but everyone seemed as surprised and alarmed as he felt. “Is it just me,” John now actually yelling, “or did the time left just get _more than halved_?”  
  
His eyes flicked to a large screen bearing the time left to self-destruct, with numbers scrolling as the milliseconds, then seconds, ticked down. It read two hours-- one hour and fifty-nine minutes, now.  
  
“It’s not just you,” Carter said grimly, moving to the closest free computer and starting to type. “Dr. McKay, any particular reason why--“  
  
“No,” McKay said, and speaking so fast he was barely comprehensible. “It just, out of the blue, halved the time, and there’s no record here as to why and oh god, this is worse than making a brat behave, we’ve got no control--“  
  
“Don’t blame it on Atlantis,” John muttered, but not so that anyone would hear.  
  
The guy from before, Carl, if John was remembering correctly, spoke again, nervously. “Should I read the rest of the IOA’s message?”  
  
“Please continue,” Carter prompted. John would’ve preferred to shoot the computer and claim complete ignorance to the message, but, as tempting as it was, things didn’t work that way. His hand still hovered the gun holstered to his side, though, itching.   
  
“With the self-destruct, remove the ZPM and naquadah generators to stop it.”  
  
At least it was short. “Please tell me we’ve already tried that,” John said.  
  
“First thing we did, when we couldn’t switch the self-destruct off through the computers,” Zelenka said. “But it did not work.”  
  
“Great help that was,” John rolled his eyes. Everyone else had similar expressions of exasperation: Teyla had her ‘this is not funny’ face, Ronon scowled, and Zelenka shook his head, going back to reading his terminal screen.   
  
For just a second, Carter held the palm of her head against the side of her forehead. But then she took a deep breath, her chest rising. “We’re on our own, then.”  
  
“Did you think otherwise?” John asked.  
  
“Not really,” Carter admitted.  
  
“Colonel Carter,” Teyla broke in. “With less than two hours remaining, we must start the evacuation at once if we are to assure everyone’s safety.”  
  
“You’re right,” Carter said, turning to her. “Not everyone can or should leave right away, but we’ve got to get the preparations under way.”  
  
“I’ve got some experience getting people out of places,” Ronon said, back half-bent and hands in pocket. “Could help with that.”  
  
“As a soldier on Sateda, right?” Carter said. “I read about that.”  
  
“I thought he wasn’t cleared for that kind of information,” John said, again sarcastically, raising his eyebrows at her. Carter looked at him with a bit of exasperation, so he didn’t rub it in any further.  
  
“I too have been through several evacuations,” Teyla said, holding herself with tight posture. She seemed to grow in height. “I have rather gotten a handle on them, if I may say so myself.”  
  
“I read about that too,” Carter nodded, stepping towards Ronon and Teyla. “Here’s the thing: not only do we have to get the personnel out, but there’s information that we, humanity and planet Earth, simply cannot afford to lose. So we need two separate teams to run the evacuation process--“  
  
Teyla leaned in closer to Carter, and their heads bent towards each other. “One for the people, one for the data.”  
  
Great. Decisions were being made, right in front of him, and they were not _his_ decisions. John opened his mouth and almost started barging in with his own commands, just to get in his orders before any more decisions could be made without his say-so.   
  
But up until now they hadn’t said anything he wouldn’t have thought up himself. And, besides, now that Carter was actively incorporating Teyla and Ronon into high-level decisions, he didn’t want to discourage that. Seeing them work together, for the first time since Elizabeth had died, John felt like things might be okay.   
  
Now, they just needed to save the city. If they didn’t, nothing would _ever_ be okay again. They might all live and they might be able to extract everything again, but he himself… Atlantis had to survive. Had to.  
  
“We’ll split the people into groups,” Ronon said, joining Teyla’s and Carter’s tête-à-tête. “By need. Most everyone can walk out here on their own, but others can’t.” People like Lorne, John thought.   
  
“Right, we’ll get the people in the infirmary out first,” Carter confirmed.   
  
“As for everyone else, we can split the people by department,” Teyla said. “No one else needs aid to leave, so the only help they need would be a well-organized evacuation. With this much time, we should be able to get everyone out.”   
  
“Looks like they’ll be in good hands,” Carter said, half-smiled. “Okay, I’ll count on the two of you to carry that out. As for the data, I’ll lead a team to extract the most vital components.”  
  
Wait a second. That left John with no one to lead, nothing to do.   
  
The three of them were already going away, Carter towards some of the other scientists, Teyla pulling up a list of the personnel on Atlantis, and Ronon waiting for her to finish that up for them to get to the action part of the evacuation.   
  
John was not going to sit by doing nothing.  
  
He couldn’t help with the data conservation, but he could join Ronon and Teyla in evacuating the personnel. And he _would_ help, if they needed him. But in his experience, the fewer people running delicate operations, the better. He’d probably end up butting heads with them over what to do, who to keep as a skeleton screw in the last minutes before the self-destruct.  
  
And sometimes being a lose canon was better, running around helping with odds and ends that always pop up in an emergency. That way, he could keep an eye on everything and everyone.   
  
He jogged to an unoccupied terminal towards the edge of the room and, on his feet, called up map after map. The peripheral sections were off-limits still, with hostile conditions to human life. That’d make evacuation easier, with everyone already concentrated in the main tower and close to the gate.  
  
What should he do? What _could_ he do?  
  
“God!” McKay exclaimed, some several meters behind John. Time for a we-are-doomed McKay tirade? The people at the terminals next to John flinched, their shoulders pressing together. He bowed down his own head, panic mounting in his throat, even knowing McKay was a drama-queen. He kept his back to him. “There’s nothing I can do, and we’re all going to--”   
  
“Don’t be ridiculous,” Carter snapped, tone sharp. It was the angriest John had heard her. “There must be something, and we’ll keep on trying--“  
  
“What is there to try?” McKay’s pitch, as much as John wanted to tune it out, went straight through him. He grasped at the table beneath the screen, trying not to hyperventilate. “We never really understood Atlantis in the first place, even if I did used to think I had it under control, and we certainly haven’t been understanding her since she went out of whack. And now we’re supposed to read her like a book and tell her what to do?! Impossible! Out of our hands! We can’t run her!”  
  
“Rodney,” Carter said. Strange. She didn’t sound angry anymore. If he didn’t know better, he’d have said she sounded excited, even. “Rodney, maybe _we_ can’t run her, but maybe--“  
  
The radio suddenly blared in John’s ear, Teyla’s voice streaming in. “We have a problem,” she said. “While we were evacuating the people in the medical bay, the entrance closed, sealing off the whole area--“  
  
John stood straight up, muscles tensing. “The maps on the computer aren’t registering anything like that.”  
  
“The computers can say what they want,” Ronon said through the radio. “But the doors won’t budge.”  
  
“Where’s Lorne?” John demanded; he hummed with a fresh dose of adrenaline, and his body longed to burst into movement.  
  
“Trapped with the others,” Teyla said.  
  
“We’re gonna,” Ronon was saying, and whatever it was they were going to do, John didn’t listen. He ran.   
  
Ronon kept on talking, and John heard McKay yelling something, but those were just words. Words meant nothing. All that mattered now was getting to the medical bay. People were there. _Lorne_ was there. He had to get them out.  
  
John didn’t have far to run. There was a transporter nearby, and that’s where he went. McKay was yelling still, except that his voice sounded closer, which didn’t make sense, because if anything, John was getting further away from him and the control room.   
  
John was close, so close, to the transporter: just four, three, two steps away, and there, the door was opening, ready to take him--  
  
But just as he was extending his foot to take that last step, he was being pulled back, a hand on his shoulder yanking him away. No. No. Not again. John pulled away, with his all might, to get that hand off him. He knew that grasp, whose it was, and never again. Never again.  
  
But McKay held on stubbornly, and rather than let go, he stumbled after John as he yanked away, hectically taking the two, one steps straight into the transporter. The transporter doors closed behind them.   
  
Cornered.   
  
“What’re you doing!” John tore McKay’s hand off him.   
  
“That’s what I should be asking you!” McKay retreated into the opposite corner of the transporter, his shoulders hunched so that they came up to his ears. “Didn’t you hear me?! I kept yelling at you about--“  
  
The lights went out, and John’s stomach dropped.  
  
“There,” McKay groused. “There, now you can see for yourself that the transporters have been working on and off. But why should I tell you, when you’re finding out for yourself, and took me along for the ride?”   
  
“The maps didn’t show that,” John said hollowly. It was dark and he was trapped. He inched backwards, his back meeting two comforting walls. But great good being backed against walls would do.   
  
All he could think of was how awful the stench would be, if he were sick in here.  
  
“You know perfectly well that the maps aren’t displaying everything!”  
  
No. He couldn’t be stuck here. He couldn’t be stuck with McKay here, especially not when he had people to save. This wasn’t the time to stick his back to the wall.  
  
John turned and attacked the door.   
  
“Trying to get out?” McKay asked.  
  
“Duh,” John said, using all his force. The door did not budge. “Okay, the Ancients have _got_ to come up with manually-operated doors.” He heard some scratching; probably McKay scraping along the walls for something that would give way.   
  
“Isn’t there supposed to be some ventilation shaft in here?!” McKay asked.  
  
“Have you seen the size of that thing? We wouldn’t fit.”  
  
Door was locked and no other way out.   
  
“Colonel? Rodney?” Carter said through the radio. “What happened? Where are you?”  
  
John’s heart accelerated. There was hope, a little bit of hope, that he was not entirely isolated with McKay. He had radio contact with the rest of the world. That had to count for something. He kept his own voice calm, if urgent. “We’re in the transporter-- no lights, no going up or down, and the door won’t open.” Saying all that, he felt like an idiot. Stuck in a transporter. Jesus Christ.  
  
“So you’re stuck,” Carter said, and that was disappointing, to say the least. She was supposed to be giving him hope, not emphasizing how screwed he was.   
  
“Looks like it,” John managed to say. “Listen, get everyone out. The people in the medical bay, there’s got to be a way to get them up to the gate floor. Maybe there’s a jumper we still have access to, they could go through a window, or we could use C4 to blast the door open--“  
  
“Teyla and Ronon are on it,” Carter promised.  
  
“They better be.” It was one thing for him to maybe die stuck in a tiny pitch-black room with the man that had-- that had-- anyway. Point was, whatever happened to him, he could deal with it. There were only two hours left, and that wasn’t _too_ long a time to spend in his own personal hell before getting blown to kingdom come.  
  
But Lorne couldn’t die because of him.  
  
“But the evacuation might not be necessary,” Carter said in a rush, like she could barely contain herself. “McKay, do you remember that program you were working on? The one about Atlantis--“  
  
John was dying to hear what program this was and what it could do, but Sam was cut off by a blast of static. “Fuck,” John muttered at the same time as McKay said, “Sam? Sam, are you there?” Fiddling with the radio settings did no good; he just got more and more static, at different volumes. “Fuck,” John repeated, and, again, “Fuck, fuck, fuck--” It became a litany as he slid down a corner till he was sitting down, no better than a lame duck.  
  
He really was stuck here with McKay, trapped and useless.   
  
These were going to be a great last two hours.   
  
The warning siren went on loud and clear, but in the absolute darkness, his sense of hearing was stronger. He could hear his breath reflecting against the hands he held to his face; the thud of his own heart; and McKay swearing as he tinkered with metal, trying to get the radio working again.  
  
It hadn’t been dark, when-- well, not this dark, anyway. There’d been light enough to see. And this floor was hard, not soft like the mattress he’d been pushed against--  
  
John pulled his knees to his chest, transferring the palms of his hand from his face to cover his ears. It almost blocked out McKay’s voice. Almost. He made himself think of the outside world. How was the evacuation going? Had Ronon found that C4 and blown open the door? How about Carter, was she working on that idea of hers, whatever it was?  
  
Jesus. Everyone else was doing something, trying to make things right where they could. And here he was, the great Lieutenant Colonel John Sheppard, folded like a deck of cards. He should be out there fighting and preventing the wreck, not _being_ the wreck.  
  
“Who’d have thought?” John heard McKay say, through the hand-barrier. He stuck his fingers into his ears. “Maybe we really will get blown up this time. I imagined it a million times; actually, it’s kind of a recurring nightmare of mine, and I’m always naked in those, but at least there was always a reason why. Either the Wraith were about to take over the city, or the Replicators wanted to take over our bodies, but it wasn’t _random_ like this--“  
  
“It’s not random,” John said, if only to shut McKay up.  
  
“What? Whatddya mean?” Damn it, McKay was speaking again. Should’ve known there’d be a follow-up.  
  
And why was he so scared, anyway? McKay wouldn’t do anything. He knew it wasn’t like that. Nothing was going to happen, except for the city blowing up, but that wasn’t related to McKay. But his throat tightened anyway. Powerless. He felt fucking powerless. He knew dozens of ways to immobilize a human being, and a dozen more to kill them, and he still felt absolutely powerless.   
  
“Do you know why!?” McKay asked. There was a thump, and his voice came from the same level as John. He must’ve sat down. “If you knew the reason, why didn’t you say anything?! If you’d told me before we got stuck here, I could’ve done something, and hey, maybe I still can--“  
  
“Of course I don’t know.” He could barely explain the whys and hows of his own behavior; how could he hope to understand Atlantis’? “But there’s gotta be a reason; there’s always a reason.”  
  
“Sheppard?” McKay’s tone was tentative. “Are you okay?”  
  
It wasn’t fair. McKay shouldn’t be able to do what he did and then ask afterwards if he was _fucking okay_. Of course he wasn’t. He was falling to pieces. He couldn’t admit it before, but here he was, huddled and squeezed up against a corner and doing his fucking best not to panic or go down memory lane and he was not fucking okay.  
  
“Sheppard?” McKay asked. Not again. He better not ask again. “Are you--“  
  
The voice came nearer, and he tried to get away, but there was only wall behind him with no room to maneuver before a hand laid itself on his shoulder and he can’t help it. He’s back there, on his back, looking up at Rodney, filled with adoration, and Rodney looks like he’s going to fall apart from lust or tenderness or guilt.   
  
Adoration mixed with revulsion, but even so, John cups Rodney’s face, like a lover, like a fucking _lover_ , and kisses him softly, though he wants to scream and scratch and away. But Rodney’s the one pushing into him, pushing in synch to John’s encouragements, and he can hear himself asking for more, moaning that it’s amazing, and begging Rodney not to stop, to never stop. Stop, John begs, in his head. Stop.  
  
John feels a squeeze on his shoulders, but that doesn’t make sense because both of Rodney’s hands are on his hip, so where is that squeeze coming from? And it’s only getting tighter, and it’s starting to shake him, shake him so that his whole upper body moves--  
  
“--hear me?” McKay was saying, clutching him by the shoulders.   
  
He was trembling, John realized. He was shaking so hard he wasn’t sure he could speak. He tried anyway. “Let go of me.” And at once McKay moved off him, his feet scraping against the floor as he scrambled away.   
  
“Oh god, I didn’t think, I didn’t mean-- but you weren’t talking, and I wanted to make sure you were okay--”   
  
“How could you?” John asked. It was a non-sequitur, but it rolled of his tongue before he even thought of it. Even if he hadn’t been able to voice it, the question had been on his mind the whole time: how could McKay have done that?  
  
“Of course I want to know if you’re okay! Just because I-- that doesn’t mean I don’t--“  
  
God, he was so tired. He almost wished the city would blow up now and spare him this. “No, McKay. Not that.” It was the closest he could get to explaining himself. If McKay was such a genius, let him read between the lines.  
  
At first there was no response, which John could deal with. He’d be happy not speaking for the time that was left. He could pretend that McKay wasn’t there.   
  
But the reply came, eventually. “I’m so, so sor--“  
  
“You don’t get to say that,” John stopped him.   
  
Again, for a while McKay didn’t speak. “I am, though.” Not as sorry as I am, John thought. “If there’s anything I can do to make up for it, I swear, Sheppard--“  
  
“Why did you do it?” Why wasn’t this over yet? Why couldn’t they be dead yet?   
  
“I--” McKay swallowed. “I don’t know.” Liar. He must’ve thought up a dozen reasons why, by now. A couple of them might’ve even been true. “I never meant--“  
  
“Sure you didn’t. But you did it, anyway.”  
  
By now, he knew better than to hope McKay’s silence would last. “Things aren’t going to be the same, anymore. If we get out of here.”  
  
John’s heart hurt. More than before. “No, they aren’t.”  
  
In a small voice, “I screwed up.”  
  
“Yeah, you did.”  
  
It felt kind of good to say that.  
  
McKay lapsed into silence again, and this time, it lasted. John listened to the warning sirens. How much time had passed? Maybe everyone was off Atlantis by now-- Lorne, Teyla, Ronon, Carter, Heightmeyer, Keller… maybe he and McKay were the only ones left in the city.  
  
Once, he’d have been proud, out of any number of ways to die, to go out with McKay by his side. But now-- he just felt lonely. He felt worse than alone, sitting across someone who’d been a friend and colleague for over four years. “I trusted you,” he found himself saying. It came out softly.  
  
“I know. I don’t know why-- I can’t believe--“  
  
He knew what McKay’s next words would be, but unlike the previous times, John didn’t try to stop him. He wasn’t sure why. Maybe because he knew McKay would keep trying, until he got it out. “I’m sorry. I’m so, so sorry.”   
  
It came out as a sob. John himself choked up. A multitude of emotions surged through him, like bathing in a current, but he couldn’t name any of them. Anger? He definitely wouldn’t mind decking McKay. As for the other feelings, he didn’t dare study them.  
  
McKay didn’t stop there. He rambled on, throwing out all kinds of apologies and self-incriminations, but he didn’t pay attention. He heard their tone, was all, and let it wash over him.   
  
He was still pissed. Oh, yes, _pissed_. But-- not panicked. At least, not as panicked.   
John sat up straighter, no longer bound to the corner. Maybe the panic would come back in full force, later, but who said later was coming? They were still counting down to destruction.   
  
He’d had enough of McKay’s apologies. “I’m never going to forgive you,” he blurted out, and then he was staring into McKay’s hurt and bewildered face, but only for a second, because then he had to squeeze his eyes shut against the sudden onslaught of light.  
  
After a second of shock, John scrambled to his feet. If the lights were back, maybe the transporter could get them down to the infirmary, and he could help save the others.   
  
But as he stood up, he realized that the ringing in his ears were only the after-effects; the warning siren itself had stopped. He was still blinking when the transporter doors slid open like a dream and he ran half-blinded to the control room.   
  
Maybe everyone had already evacuated. Maybe the city was empty with no one but him and McKay, and Atlantis, in another stroke of sheer randomness, had put an end to the self-destruct. Just because.  
  
But no, the control room was filled with cheering, and some crying, scientists. There were tears and hugs and what looked suspiciously like the beer people on the base got from planet H12-661. Even Carter looked almost teary-eyed.  
  
“Good news, or something?” he asked. The flippancy came automatically. But even if he could joke naturally again, he still had worries to clear. “Where are Ronon and Teyla?”  
  
“Sheppard! Rodney!” Carter exclaimed, smiling.  
  
John glanced back. Of course McKay had been right behind him. What was he going to do, stay in the transporter? But it was okay. Not great, but it was okay. John’s panic hadn’t come back, yet.  
  
“What happened?” McKay asked. “One moment we’re saying our last words and then--“  
  
Carter clasped her hands over her chest and John thought she might’ve wanted to tap him on the back or even given a hug, but, solidarity or not, he couldn’t go there. Still too damned scary, touching another human being. “It was so simple, you wouldn’t believe it! I ran that program you wrote a couple of days back.”  
  
McKay’s eyes widened. “Not that one where we delegated more of Atlantis’ smaller details to itself? So that we didn’t have to keep telling it how to do every little thing?”  
  
“That’s the one,” Carter nodded. “It took a while to find it-- you really need to improve your organization scheme, McKay, otherwise no one will ever make sense of your findings without you over their shoulder-- and then I was worried Atlantis wouldn’t accept this program either, since it’d been rejecting all others changes in code.”   
  
“But the program uploaded just fine!” Zelenka concluded, making a hand motion like a jet plane going up. “Put the command, and there! Done.”  
  
John made a face. “That’s _it_?” And he glared at McKay before he could make any comment about how it was thanks to his genius. “Is it going to last? There’s not going to be any ‘hah hah, gotcha!’ sequels to this self-destruct, is there?”  
  
“I don’t know,” Carter said. “We’ll have to wait and see.”  
  
“Gate activation,” someone announced.   
  
“What, more trouble already?!” McKay freaked out.  
  
“Relax,” Carter said, “That’s just the evacuated people coming back.”  
  
And indeed, down in the Gate Room were Ronon and Teyla, talking to the returning personnel as they came through.   
  
John sprinted down. “You seem to be in one piece.”  
  
“As do you,” Teyla smiled. John glanced at her hand-held computer; it had a list of people’s names, some with checks next to them.  
  
“Is Lorne--“  
  
Before he could finish his question, Ronon was already answering it. “He stayed back; said since he’s already off duty, might as well recover back home.”   
  
“Good,” John said, and meant it. As long as Lorne was okay, everything would be fine. He could still live with himself. “Good.”  
  
  
  
 **Epilogue**  
  
Rodney spent the better part of the night twisting and turning in bed, unable to sleep. It was like the night before Christmas, only so much worse. When he finally saw the darkness outside start to lighten, he jumped out of bed, grabbed his computer, and went out into the hallway.  
  
He made his way to a room that had recently gone back to normal, so to speak. While most of Atlantis had remained in upheaval after the near-self destruct, over the weeks many of the rooms had gradually returned to regular condition.   
  
Many of the sections in the periphery were still off limits.   
  
This room was amongst the last ones in the main tower to stay out of control, with temperatures above two hundred degrees Celsius and noxious fumes. Just before it regained normalcy, its windows shattered. Rodney remembered standing in the doorway, watching as others cleaned up the glass. He’d wanted to help, but it hadn’t felt like his place.   
  
Now he returned to the room and stood in the middle of it. The glass hadn’t been repaired yet, leaving a gigantic hole in the middle of the wall, bringing in a breeze. It was still dark outside.  
  
Rodney settled beneath the gaping hole and checked for any changes in Atlantis’ status, as he’d been doing compulsively. It was the closest he could get to helping with the recovery. Having completed a thorough scan, he went back to his project to strengthen the city’s defense shield.   
  
He’d been a workaholic before, but now he lived for work. It kept him distracted.  
  
He stayed there he knew not how long, but when he heard a soft “Rodney?”, the light coming into the room was a light grey. Teyla padded into the room. “I was looking for a place to meditate and saw that the door here was open,” she explained.  
  
“Just me,” Rodney said. He kept on typing at the computer screen, hoping that if he ignored her, she would go away. If she did, they wouldn’t have to talk about _that_.   
  
But Teyla was made of sterner stuff. A bit of ignoring would not deter her.   
  
She sat down next to him, bringing her knees up to her chest and hugging her legs. “John and Ronon return from leave today.”  
  
Rodney closed his eyes. Putting down his computer, all he could say was, “Yeah.”  
  
He hadn’t told Teyla. He hadn’t told anyone, to his own amazement. He’d never been able to keep a secret before, not even his own passwords. But this felt beyond him. It wasn’t his to tell. It was up to Sheppard, and as far as Rodney knew, he hadn’t told anyone.  
  
Even if Rodney had felt he could speak of it, he didn’t have the words. It’d been two months and still the firmest grasp he had on it was a welling of emotions, his throat choking up, every time he thought of it.   
  
Despite not knowing the specifics, though, Teyla understood the gravity of what had passed between him and Sheppard. “Are you ready?” she asked.  
  
“No.” He probably never would be. “But that doesn’t matter, he’s coming back anyway.”  
  
Teyla eyed him sympathetically and then lifted her arm slowly, as if to give him advance warning, placing it over his shoulders. He shuddered at the touch; he still felt too guilty to feel he had this right to this, but Sheppard was going to be back in a few hours. He couldn’t resist the comfort.   
  
God, he missed Sheppard. He’d probably miss him for the rest of his life.   
  
He let himself lean against her, burrowing his face in his hands, and she stroked his hair. This was the most human contact he’d had since that night. It felt good and terrible at the same time. Still, terrible or not, Teyla’s rubbing his head in rhythmic circles was soothing, and the urge to speak welled in him. “I did something bad. Really bad.”  
  
It was the closest he’d come to voicing out loud what he’d done.  
  
He half expected Teyla to coil away, but she stayed next to him, quiet. He went on. “And I don’t think I can ever make it better.” He held his breath for her response, which was long in coming.  
  
Finally, she said: “Maybe not. But you can keep on trying.”  
  
Rodney laughed bitterly. “Great good that’s done so far.”  
  
“What else can you do?” she asked sharply. He stared at her, struck. But it wasn’t until she breathed, “Oh, Rodney,” and hugged him, that he realized that he was crying, tears running thick down his face.   
  
Daylight poured in now, the breeze from the window cool against Rodney’s skin.


End file.
